Having trouble viewing this email? Click here March 1, 2021 - 17 Adar 5781

By Adam Smulevich

Every book written by Edith Bruck is poetry, rousing emotions. Also, and especially when she explores painful and difficult themes. When she bares out her wounds. Il pane perduto (La nave di Teseo), her last work, continues this tradition of outstanding literature recognized also with the nomination at the next Strega Prize. To propose to the direction of the most prestigious Italian literary award, the journalist and former parliamentarian Furio Colombo, creator of the Act that established in Italy the Day of Memory, who speaks of the book as “dense and bearer of truth” characterized by “literary beauty, stylistics, emotions”
The author traces her life, marked in her youth by deportation to death camps. A comparison from which she never escapes, aware of the fact that “illuminating a single conscience is worth the effort and the pain of keeping alive the memory of what has been”, as she affirmed in an interview with L’osservatore Romano to which followed the request for meeting and the recent visit of Papa Bergoglio in her apartment. Il pane perduto (The lost bread) continues Colombo, “is a beautiful book about an atrocious story, and the impossible contradiction makes it even greater”. 

Translated by Oyebuchi Lucia Leonard and revised by Antonella Losavio, students at Trieste University and the Advanced school for interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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“The spread of fascist and racist messages, both on social media and on too many other media, has now reached intolerable levels. The civil conscience of the Republic born of the Resistance must show itself aware of the dangers and react. I therefore wish the best success to your collection of signatures, which I hope will reach and exceed the necessary number of subscriptions by 31 March”.
So the Senator for life and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre, addressing the mayor of Stazzema Maurizio Verona, has chosen to adhere, without putting her own signature to avoid an overlap between parliamentary and popular initiative”, to the law against fascist and Nazi propaganda recently presented by the administration of Stazzema. The Senator for life, who a year ago received the meritorious citizenship of the Tuscan municipality, one of the places most affected by the Nazi-Fascist ferocity, has ensured her vigilance so that the bill “is discussed and approved quickly in Parliament”.  

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By Alberto Cavaglion*

The book by Olinto Domenichini Le ricerche hanno dato esito negativo (Cierre, 2021, Searches did not succeed), which tells the story of benevolent policemen and racial persecution in Verona in the years 1943-1945, deserves to be noted for its extensive archival sources and its framework, which is not only linked to the story of Verona, featuring a paradox. In a city where the control of the Italian Social Republic was tighter than anywhere else, the number of deported Jews was far from high.
The history of antisemitism in the Republic of Salò is made of light and shadow. Domenichini found himself in the enviable position to have access to a tremendous amount of documents that were not preserved in other cities of Northern Italy. The protagonists of the book – the officials Masiero, Gagliano, Costantino and Sena – offer an insight into the tragic reality of those months that cannot be generalised. They were not inspired by Christian love or a conscious political dissent, but they probably acted in the name of more innocent and unpolitical feelings.

*Historian

Translated by Mattia Stefani, student at the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreting and intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.

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Von David Bidussa*

Wenn ich Zweifel und Unsicherheiten habe, lese ich noch einmal die Worte von Inge Scholl. Ihre Geschwister Hans und Sophie Scholl gründeten die “Weiße Rose" d. h. eine Widerstandsgruppe gegen das NS-Regime. Und sie wurden am 22. Februar 1943 hingerichtet. Jahre später - beim Verfolgen ihre Geschichte – fragte sie sich: “Aber kann man sie Helden nennen? Sie haben nichts Übermenschliches unternommen. Sie haben etwas Einfaches verteidigt, sind für etwas Einfaches eingestanden, für das Recht und die Freiheit des einzelnen Menschen, für seine freie Entfaltung und ein freies Leben. Sie haben sich keiner außergewöhnlichen Idee geopfert, haben keine großen Ziele verfolgt; was sie wollten, war, dass Menschen wie du und ich in einer menschlichen Welt leben können. Vielleicht liegt dann das wirkliche Heldentum, beharrlich gerade das Alltägliche, Kleine und Naheliegende zu verteidigen”. So weiß man - in Zweifelsfällen - wo man mit einer unterbrochenen Rede fortfährt.

*Sozialhistoriker der Ideen

Übersetzung von Antonella Losavio, Studentin der Hochschule für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer der Universität von Triest und Praktikantin bei der Zeitungsredaktion der Union der jüdischen Gemeinden von Italien.

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Par J. M. Sultan*

Les manuscrits hébreux de la bibliothèque nationale du Royaume-Uni – qui a été constituée au cours des 250 dernières années – a été récemment numérisée. Et, à l’occasion de l’organisation de l’exposition Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word, le Dr. Ilana Tahan, officier de l’Empire britannique et commissaire d’exposition, nous en dit plus sur son organisation et ce qui distingue ces manuscrits.
Passéisme: Avant de nous donner des détails sur votre récente exposition, pouvez-vous nous parler brièvement de la riche collection de manuscrits hébreux conservés à la British Library ?
Ilana Tahan: La collection de manuscrits hébreux de la British Library est une ressource scientifique précieuse et inégalée de renommée internationale, couvrant plus de 1 000 ans et une vaste étendue géographique. Son contenu est riche et diversifié, englobant toutes les facettes de la littérature hébraïque et de l’apprentissage juif.

*Cet article a été originellement publié sur Passéisme le 17 février 2021.

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