By Anna Foa* A few days ago, in an intervention from remote in a school in Lazio, I was talking about October 16, 1943 [the day the Raid of the Ghetto of Rome took place]. Senior high school students, in their 18. Question time comes. The first proposes the abused parallel between the Shoah and …
By Angelica Edna Calò Livne In January and during the Pesach, on the day chosen by Israel to commemorate the Holocaust and Heroism, we think about the horrors of the Shoah more than ever. The pictures, the memories, the stories of struggles, hunger, cold and oppression condense and resurface inside us vehemently, because all of …
By Gadi Polacco “Right on Holocaust Remembrance Day’s week”, has been frequently remarked when commenting on the details of the physical and verbal aggression recently inflicted on a 12 years old Jewish boy in the province of Livorno by two 15 years old girls. Sure, the calendar makes this notation evident but not of any …
By Alberto Cavaglion* Of all the port cities of Italy, where lively communities flourished, Ancona is the least studied, although just like Trieste, Livorno, Venezia, it is filled with Jewish memories. Who knows if in the synagogue of Ancona is still preserved those splendid curtains to hang on the ark that encloses the scrolls of …
By David Bidussa* When someone argues that democracy is a slow regime that does not decide, this still image comes to my mind. Wannsee, 20 January 1942 (80 years ago next Thursday): in 90 minutes – the duration of a football match, excluding extra time – thirteen Nazis hierarchs make a convinction operational and issue …
By Anna Foa* A short passage on the prison of S. Vittore in Milan taken from the dialogue between Marta Cartabia and Liliana Segre after their visit to the Shoah Memorial. An extraordinary text that should be read in all schools to explain and teach what racism was, what the Constitution was, and how the …
By Anna Linda Callow* There are many ways to say in Ivrit (Hebrew) the non-Jewish year that just ended. I knew shanà misharit, commercial year, and shanà ezrahit, calendar year, but today I came upon the expression shanà lo’azit, that might translate as “foreign year”, non-Jewish year. However, the term is richer than it seems …
By Anna Segre Si aujourd’hui est l’anniversaire d’A et non l’anniversaire de B, on suppose que B souhaite bon anniversaire à A, et non l’inverse. Il serait absurde pour A de prétendre à tout prix souhaiter bon anniversaire à B et de se sentir offensé si quelqu’un lui fait remarquer que ce n’était pas l’anniversaire …
By Gadi Polacco “Season’s Greeting”, comme l’explique l’Oxford English Dictionary, est une expression sur laquelle je suis tombé lorsqu’il y a plusieurs années j’ai commencé à travailler dans le domaine de la construction navale, par nécessité et vocation internationale. C’est une formule bizarre, presque du secteur des fruits et légumes, avec cet appel aux saisons. …
By Gabriel Spiegel* Growing up in a modern orthodox Jewish home, my family and I would go to synagogue every sabbath. In our community, the level of attire for shul could be simply described as business casual to business attire, and it is at the age of 13, when he becomes bar mitzvah, that a …
Some of them fled the country without even taking with them their documents. Too much fear of ending up trapped in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. After having collaborated in different ways with the diplomatic and military Italian mission, they had become a target for the jihadists. So, thanks to a military airlift, hundreds of …
By Alberto Cavaglion* There is something tragic or better noble, in Maria Laura Rodotà’s refusal: “My father was a southerner illuminist, and he would have super vaccinated. He listened politely to idiots but did not love them”. Apart from the epithet, meant for the organizers of the movement promoted by Mattei, Agamben, Freccero, and Cacciari …
By Daniel Reichel “If he has expressed this wish and I will be strong enough, I’ll be very happy to meet him. His release is wonderful news”. Speaking with Pagine Ebraiche, Senator for life and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre responded with affection to the request of Patrick Zaki, the right researcher detained in Egypt since …
By Dario Calimani To Ernesto Galli Della Loggia, according to whom saying that Fascism has ‘also done good things’ would be a self-evident truth, we can recommend the careful and rigorous pages of Francesco Filippi, Mussolini ha fatto anche cose buone (lit. Mussolini has also done good things). Della Loggia, and also some of my …
By Samantha Brenner* Picture this: the waves of the warm Mediterranean waters crashing ashore, as the groom steps on the ceremonial glass underneath a floral chuppah, and the guests break into a joyous shout of “Mazel Tov!”. These images of a Jewish destination wedding in Italy, are increasingly embraced and promoted by wedding planners. For …
By David Bidussa* “Man believes he wants freedom. He actually has a great fear of it because it forces him to make decisions”. So Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom. It is 1941. Fromm is on the other side of the Atlantic and sees his former continent as a world adrift. More or less in …
By Anna Segre How many of the few good things arisen or grown as a result of the pandemic are destined to remain and how many will return to their exact previous state? Unfortunately there are several not-so-encouraging signs: traffic seems more chaotic than ever, in spite of the spread of work from home; so …
Par Alberto Cavaglion* J’avoue que je n’ai jamais aimé les productions de Roberto Calasso, tandis que j’ai toujours apprécié son nez dans le domaine éditorial. J’étais impressionné par le jugement satyrique de Cases dans son œuvre “Che cosa fai in giro?”. Cases en parlant de son ancêtre, le rabbin de Reggio Israel Carmi, un opposant …
By Roberto Jona “Fascist delirium in Predappio”. So, correctly, the Italian daily La Stampa defined the recent actions that happened in Predappio and the city’s situation (last week hundreds congregated in Predappio, the birthplace of Mussolini, to commemorate the 99th anniversary of the March on Rome). But I would like to suggest a question and …
By Gadi Luzzatto Voghera* Our country confronts itself with history in a somehow reticent way, especially when history does not follow a reassuring mainstream of widely-shared and lesser-problematic narration. The overwhelming effort met when discussing the idea of a museum on Fascist Italy, with all its debates and arguments about the location and the type …