Having trouble viewing this email? Click here  September 14, 2020/25 Elul, 5780

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

Millions of Italian pupils are heading back to school, after six months at home. But the bell already rang in some Jewish schools. A week ago, students went back to their classrooms in Rome, Milan, Turin, and Trieste (the four Jewish schools presently active in Italy). It was an extraordinary moment for students, teachers, and families, in a country hit hard by the pandemic. And it was a first glimpse of the new normality of the virus-era.
Jewish schools worked hard to guarantee a safe learning environment. Spaces were sanitized, equipped with hand sanitizers and thermal scanners, and many protocols are in place for social distancing in classrooms and shared spaces. Things won’t be the same, but there is no doubt that the path forward is now open.
It was not easy. In times of pandemic, reopening whatever community space is complex. However, the joy expressed by the kids on their first day of school was its own reward. “Reopening the kindergarten was a big emotion”, confirmed to Pagine Ebraiche the President of Milan Jewish community Milo Hasbani. “We had to deal with a hundred kids, parents, and teachers. It was a great general test for the reopening of the school, a few days later”. Since the city was dramatically affected by the pandemic, Milan school was the first to close. Reopening was the best way to be back together, both as an educative institution and a community.
community.

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff

An Italian story of commitment to the memory of the Holocaust will be represented at the 41th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, which will take place on September 20^th. The documentary by CBS The Lost Music, chronicling the unfailing commitment of the Italian composer and pianist Francesco Lotoro to give life to music from Holocaust, was nominated in the category Outstanding Arts, Culture and Entertainment Report.
The documentary depicts the musician effort to recover, perform, and in some cases finishing pieces of music composed in captivity by Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The double-length segment was aired twice after “60 Minutes”, the popular transmission on CBS, under the “60 Minutes Presents”.
Mr. Lotoro started his research in 1988 and has already collected and catalogued more than 8 thousand musical scores and thousands of documents, books, and audiovisual material gathered in trips around the world. With his wife Grazia, he’s continuing to gather, transcribe, perform, and record music and is currently working on an even larger collection.
 

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff

President Sergio Mattarella led the tributes to Liliana Segre as the Holocaust survivor and Life Senator celebrated her 90th birthday on Thursday. The head of State called Segre and thanked her for her efforts to combat hatred, violence and discrimination, sources said.
Born into an Italian Jewish family in Milan, Liliana Segre was deported to the Auschwitz death camp at 13 and was one of the few survivors of the children taken there. Her father and her paternal grandparents were killed in the Shoah, and her mother died when Liliana was a baby. She was liberated from Malchow, one of the sub-camps of Ravensbrück Nazi concentration camp, on May Day 1945.
For more than a half-century she remained quiet about her tragedy, but in the 1990s she began speaking up and visiting classrooms. She became one of the more active witnesses of the Holocaust, speaking to thousands of students and groups all over Italy.
She felt the obligation, as she said, to “pass on the memory”. “Indifference – she said - is more guilty than violence itself. It is the moral apathy of those who turn away from others: it also happens today with racism and other horrors of the world. Memory is like a vaccine against indifference.”

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By Pagine Ebraiche staff 
 
"With Amos Luzzatto, a leader and an extraordinary man have disappeared. It is an indelible sign what Amos, for two terms president of the UCEI, essayist and active disseminator of the thousands of years of Jewish experience, has left throughout Italian society”. With these words, the president of UCEI – Union of Italian Jewish Communities Noemi Di Segni, commemorated the death of one of the great protagonists of the Italian Jewish world.
Amos Luzzatto, who died Wednesday in his Rome home aged 92, was a physician, a writer, university professor, scholar and former two-time head of UCEI. As an essayist and active popularizer of the multi-millennial Jewish experience, he left an indelible mark on the whole Italian society. He will also be remembered for his human rights battle, for his fight to defend Holocaust Remembrance, and for his battle against racism and prejudice. Testimonies of affection have been numerous.
 

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Le 8 septembre 1943, 19 heures 42 minutes. Badoglio annonce à la radio l’armistice qui avait été signé le 3 septembre à Cassible et qui marquait la capitulation sans conditions de l’Italie aux alliés. Le peuple s’en est réjoui, puisqu’on pensait que c’était la fin de la guerre, une guerre infame, que les italiens avaient vu d’un bon œil tout d’abord, tandis qu’elle était de plus en plus mal vue au fil du temps et des désastres. En fait, il s’agissait de l’occupation allemande et du début de presque deux années de terreur et de massacres. Le 10 septembre Rome a été occupée. Presque aussitôt la Shoah a commencé également pour les Juifs italiens et on assistait aux premières déportations effectuées par les allemands et les fascistes italiens. Il ne faut pas l’oublier et surtout il ne faut pas oublier la contribution de zélés bourreaux italiens, qui font leur apparition de plus en plus ouvertement aujourd’hui.

Anna Foa, historienne
Traduit par Sara Facelli, étudiante de l’École Supérieure pour les Interprètes et les Traducteurs de Trieste et stagiaire dans le bureau du journal de l’Union des communautés juives italiennes.
 

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By JHE*
 
Italian Jews are mourning the death this week of Amos Luzzatto, a longtime community leader who passed away September 9 aged 92.
Luzzatto, a physician and scholar, served as president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) from 1998-2006 and also served as president of the Jewish community of Venice. He was deeply engaged in Jewish heritage and cultural affairs, and a powerful champion of the role of culture and heritage in society and in forging Jewish identity.
It was during his mandate as president of the UCEI that the European Day of Jewish Culture (ECJC) was established. The first edition of the pan-European festival took place in 2000. This past Sunday, September 6, the EDJC kicked off its 21st annual edition, with hundreds of events in more than 25 countries.

The article was published in Jewish Heritage Europe on September 11, 2020
 

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