\u201cI\u2019ve been telling my story in schools for 60 years. Recently, I injured myself, so now I mostly do it through Zoom. But it is always worth it.\u201d Holocaust survivor and writer Edith Bruck received applause from dozens of young people gathered at Rome\u2019s National Library of Italian Judaism for the opening day of the second edition of the project Between Resistance and Surrender: To Survive Living Free! 80 years of the desire for freedom! This year\u2019s focus is Hungary, \u201cher\u201d Hungary, where Bruck was born and from which she was deported to extermination camps after being arrested by local fascist gendarmes. Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen. \u201cIt\u2019s always worth talking about it,\u201d said the writer, who arrived in Italy in 1954, \u201cbecause if I can leave a mark on just ten people, then even my survival will have had meaning.\u201d
\nBruck\u2019s testimony has taken different forms over the years: speaking in schools, publishing books and poetry, and participating in television appearances when necessary. \u201cI feel this is a moral duty,\u201d she emphasized.
\nThe Between Resistance and Surrender project, organized by the CDEC Foundation, offers students and teachers an educational journey with various meetings planned in the coming months, culminating in a study week in Budapest for 30 students. The topics addressed include \u201cMemory and Resistance of Italian Jews,\u201d \u201cThe Shoah between persecution and Resistance,\u201d and \u201cForms of Holocaust Memory.\u201d With guidance from historians Liliana Picciotto and Michele Sarfatti, the session also explored the life of Lutheran pastor Gabor Sztehlo, who, in Hungary under persecution, \u201cwent from being a bystander to a rescuer\u201d and embodied an \u201cethic of the righteous,\u201d akin to that of anti-Nazi German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
\n\u201cEven in total darkness, there was light,\u201d said Bruck, in conversation with Professor Deborah D\u2019Auria, with support from CDEC director Gadi Luzzatto Voghera. \u201cThere was light in our neighbor who gave us flour for Passover on the eve of our deportation. There was light in the Nazi who pushed me toward the forced labor line rather than the crematorium line.\u201d Bruck was introduced by UCEI President Noemi Di Segni, who remarked, \u201cHearing her words is a gift for us all.\u201d
\nThe project, backed by the Italian Christian Evangelical Baptist Union, also involves Rome\u2019s Sapienza University and the University of Florence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"