{"id":6206,"date":"2020-03-23T21:20:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T20:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moked.it\/international\/?p=6206"},"modified":"2020-03-23T21:20:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T20:20:14","slug":"news-tribute-raffaella-mortara-1958-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2020\/03\/23\/news-tribute-raffaella-mortara-1958-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"NEWS A tribute to Raffaella Mortara (1958-2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cdec-mortara\"<\/a>By Pagine Ebraiche staff<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Italian Jewish community is mourning the passing, at the age of 62, of Raffaella Mortara, whose dedication and courage have left a mark on Italy\u2019s cultural and political life as well as on Italian Judaism. She was a pillar for the Jewish Contemporary Documentation Centre (CDEC) in Milan, and in her youth she had long been part of Giovanni Spadolini\u2019s secretariat, whose political fights she shared. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe had an independent spirit; she was the youngest among us cousins. I remember how committed she was in CDEC, MEIS and politics. Politics was commonplace in her family: her father Amedeo was the co-founder of the European federalist movement; he and Raffaella\u2019s mother Luisella were close friends of Spadolini\u2019s, and Raffaella grew up in a cultural and politically engaged atmosphere. She was also very active in the defence of women\u2019s rights and civil rights in general,\u201d recalled Giorgio Mortara, vice-President of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities, who underlined his cousin\u2019s engagement in Judaism as well as in the civil sphere. In a book dedicated to Spadolini, she herself wrote about her relationship with the Italian politician, who was a regular guest at the Mortaras\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Giovanni-Spadolini-Raffaella-Mortara\"<\/a>\u201cThe friendship between my family and Giovanni Spadolini \u2013 \u2018the Senator\u2019, as we used to lovingly call him at home \u2013\u201d wrote Raffaella Mortara, who had strongly supported the book dedicated to Spadolini, edited by Valentino Baldacci, \u201clasted fifteen years, until his passing. This is why it seemed only natural to us to dedicate this book to my father, Amedeo Mortara, who passed away recently \u2013 may his memory be a blessing. The book focuses on Spadolini\u2019s work for Israel and his acknowledgement of Italian Judaism\u2019s huge contribution to culture and civil rights over the centuries, and to Italy\u2019s birth, development and rebirth after its \u2018second Renaissance\u2019, as the Senator loved to call the fight for national liberation against Nazi-Fascism. To my father, politics was dedication. It meant serving the whole Italian community. And it meant both dream and utopia, since his exile in Switzerland as a young pupil of Luigi Einaudi, Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, for a truly unified, democratic and free Europe (\u2026). Giovanni Spadolini felt exactly the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Councillor of the Ferrara Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah\u2019s board of directors, Mortara has dedicated herself to enhancing the role of Judaism within the Italian society. And, in particular, she did so by supporting its institutions through ideas, projects and much more. \u201cShe has always been very close to CDEC, and very generous, without people knowing,\u201d says current CDEC\u2019s President Giorgio Sacerdoti, who also had family ties with Raffaella. \u201cShe worked really hard to carry out some of the CDEC\u2019s projects, among which is a study on Jewish partisans and ongoing research on Jewish MPs.\u201d This last project was entrusted to CDEC\u2019s Director Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, who remembers Raffaella with affection and emotion. These feelings are shared by her nephew Guido Ottolenghi, President of the Jewish Museum in Bologna. <\/p>\n

\u201cRaffaella will be deeply missed, but her warmth, kindness and gentle spirit will forever be in our hearts. We will remember her as a big-hearted woman, always willing to help her extended family and the Community,\u201d said her Mortara nephews, \u201cShe has always fought so that new generations understood the importance of Remembrance of the Holocaust, bringing her family\u2019s story into schools for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. For every Passover Seder she used to proudly read an excerpt from the book written by her grandmother Ada Ottolenghi, who, in the conclusion, encouraged her to pass on Remembrance of what happened so that it never happens again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of memories, Raffaella Mortara herself wrote about a touching episode which was very significant for her life and her relationship with Spadolini and CDEC. \u201cIt was a very hot day, 12th June 1991, when the first edition of the book Il libro della Memoria: gli ebrei deportati dall\u2019Italia 1943-45 (The book of Remembrance: Jews deported from Italy 1943-45) was presented. Giovanni Spadolini, then President of the Senate, had strongly supported that event: he had always believed in the importance of cultivating memories and Remembrance, putting the due emphasis on the CDEC Foundation\u2019s (of which my mother was president) decades-long work to retrace the story of those 8566 deportees with the utmost historical rigour and human sympathy. <\/p>\n

Giovanni Spadolini said, \u2018That flame shining on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem pervades this book\u2019s touching pages as well. It is not a book of names, nor an alphabetical list of lives which were taken in an excess of folly. Il libro della Memoria is a people of shadows watching our conscience, shaking off the numbness which is always lurking, and the indifference the conscience falls into when memory fades. A people\u2019s future \u2013 Schlegel admonished \u2013 is always the outcome of the memory of the past. The clearer the memory, the safer the people\u2019s future. We must cling to remembrance, because our present has its roots in it. To the unsettling question \u2018what will remain of the Holocaust when the last of survivors is taken\u2019, Il libro della Memoria answers with the agonizing and meticulous list of those names, each of which makes us grasp a life\u2019s, a family\u2019s, a community\u2019s tragedy. But when collected in a volume, catalogued rigorously by alphabetical order, these names release an extraordinarily strong warning, they trace the perimeter of the cemetery where, along with the lives of millions of Jews, was buried a part of European conscience.\u2019\u201d A warning and a reflection, those by Raffaella Mortara, which will keep accompanying us. May her memory be a blessing.<\/p>\n

Translated by Claudia Azzalini and revised by Mattia Stefani, both students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste University and interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pagine Ebraiche staff The Italian Jewish community is mourning the passing, at the age of 62, of Raffaella Mortara, whose dedication and courage have left a mark on Italy\u2019s cultural and political life as well as on Italian Judaism. 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