Having trouble viewing this email? Click here February 1, 2021/ 19 Shevat 5781

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

Fascisms of yesterday, fascisms of today. This dual perspective characterized the online round table held ahead of the Holocaust Remembrance Day on the initiative of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities. The focus, addressed by some experts, was a theme outlined as follows: "There is a precise Italian responsibility, of the fascist regime with all its characterizations, which led to the war, the persecution and the extermination of Italian Jews".
The way in which fascism has penetrated the Italian culture, the way it has asserted itself, the matrices of organization of the State and power, the violence and the propaganda system have been the object of study and research. But still, it was noted, "there is insufficient knowledge, awareness and sense of responsibility for this past". Yet it is a very topical issue in the current epochal crisis "which makes prejudices never eradicated re-emerge and often explode" and conspiracy ideas, "which today as yesterday often lead to identifying a convenient culprit", resurface.

Read more

By Pagine Ebraiche staff

The number of Italians who consider the Holocaust Remembrance Day an essential democratic defense and a barrier against the advance of hate speech is increasing. It is the conclusion of the new survey conducted by the SWG Institute in collaboration with the editorial staff of Pagine Ebraiche.
The research was presented last week in a video-conference by the director of SWG Riccardo Grassi in an event that, along with the editorial staff, saw the participation of the national coordinator against anti-Semitism Milena Santerini, the director of UNAR Triantafillos Loukarelis and the sociologist Betti Guetta of the Anti-Semitism Observatory of the CDEC Foundation. The UCEI president Noemi Di Segni held the conclusions.
The data collected are of considerable interest. The numbers catalogued and analyzed by SWG attest to the good health of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, which reaches the highest levels of public consideration since 2014 (the first year of the survey). It is a result that must not be taken for granted.
If in 2019 the media attention on the topic had been high and many events produced a spurt of collective indignation, in 2020, as SWG recalls, almost the attention was absorbed by Covid-19, relegating issues such as those of anti-Semitism quite on the sidelines.

(The figure above shows how the percentage of those who considered it 'essential to commemorate the Holocaust Remembrance Day had risen sharply)

Read more

Exhibitions and documents related to the Holocaust and the persecution of Jews during fascism are now on display online thanks to the platform Shoah Museum just launched by the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDEC). To inaugurate the new digital space is an exhibition redesigned for the occasion titled "The persecution of the Jews in Italy 1938 - 1945, through the documents of the time". The display illustrates the persecution of Jews in Italy during the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation, retracing the phase of the disruption of rights and social persecution, implemented from 1938 to 1943 under the fascist government of the Kingdom of Italy, then the phase of the arrests, deportation and extermination, carried out from September 1943 to the Liberation in the regions under German occupation and the Italian Social Republic. It is an example of how, through documents, photographs, newspaper articles of the time, it is possible to build an online educational path within the new reality of the Shoah Museum platform.

By Giovanni Vigna*

MANTUA, Italy — Four Italian Holocaust survivors who cheated death during an infamous Gestapo raid on the Rome ghetto have dedicated their final years to educating the public about the Nazi atrocities of World War II that killed much of their families.
The volunteers, Silvana Ajò Cagli, Emanuele Di Porto, Attilio Lattes and Marco Di Porto, regularly meet with visitors of the Shoah Foundation Museum in Rome and travel to schools, sharing their experiences with young people around the country. They do so as the last generation of witnesses to the Holocaust dies out, taking their firsthand testimony with them.
This year, they are largely unable to travel due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis that harshly hit Italy. The Shoah Foundation Museum where they do much of their work was established in 2008 and is housed in the Casina dei Vallati, an ancient medieval residence in the heart of Rome’s Jewish quarter. It aims to promote the establishment of a larger national Holocaust museum together with the Rome municipality, but is extremely active in its own right.
 
*This article originally appeared on Times of Israel on January 27, 2021.
 

Read more

By Rob Picheta and Valentina Di Donato*

A letter from a descendent of Italy's wartime King, apologizing for his ancestor's role in enabling Mussolini's fascist policies during World War II, has been criticized by historians and Jewish groups after several decades of silence from members of the disbanded royal family.
Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, the great-grandson of King Victor Emmanuel III, wrote a letter to the country's Jewish community in which he said his family's role in rubber-stamping dictator Benito Mussolini's anti-Semitic laws caused "a wound still open for the whole of Italy."
He said he and his relatives "dissociate ourselves firmly" from the King, who approved Mussolini's rise to power and gave the laws royal assent, and asked for forgiveness for his ancestor's actions.
But the gesture, made ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday, has been dismissed by historians as "too little too late," and has drawn the ire of Jewish groups who condemned the family's lengthy reluctance to confront its role in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust in Europe.

*This article originally appeared on CNN on January 27, 2021.

Read more

In addition to our social media in Italian, Pagine Ebraiche International recently launched its new profile on Facebook. On our page, we share news, photos, and updates. Please take a moment and visit it, and once there, click “Like” or “Follow”. We look forward to bring you great information and connect with you.
We encourage you to comment, ask us questions, or share the content with your friends, family, and co-workers. Join us on Facebook