Bassani's appeals
When we speak of Giorgio Bassani, what comes to mind is, above all, the novelist. However, what is perhaps less well-known is the author's commitment to safeguarding the Italian artistic and cultural heritage, which stood out particularly in 1955, when we saw him as one of the founders of the cultural association Italia Nostra, and as president of it from 1965 to 1980. In the essay “Dalle macerie, cronache sul fronte meridionale” (Feltrinelli, 2018), devoted entirely to Taranto by the recently deceased journalist Alessandro Leogrande, a chapter is dedicated to Bassani's appeals for the recovery of the old town of Taranto.
Around the mid-1960s, when Taranto was being “resurrected” following the construction of the Italsider steelworks (now known as Former Ilva), the Christian Democrat municipal administration proposed razing the old city entirely, saving only a few monumental buildings so as to then build a sort of “new Manhattan” or “new Dubai”. Many intellectuals of the time were against this irrational demolition project, including Bassani, the architect Bruno Zevi, Giulio Carlo Argan, Cesare Brandi and Arrigo Benedetti.
Translation by Gianluca Pace, revised by Onda Carofiglio, students at the Secondary School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.
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ITALICS
Deep in Vatican archives,
scholar discovers ‘flabbergasting’ secrets
By Jason Horowitz*
David Kertzer put down his cappuccino, put on his backpack and went digging for more Vatican secrets. “There’s an aspect of treasure hunting,” said Mr. Kertzer, a 74-year-old historian.
Moments later he cut through a crowd lined up to see Pope Francis, showed his credentials to the Swiss Guards and entered the archives of the former headquarters for the Holy Roman Inquisition.
Over the last few decades, Mr. Kertzer has turned the inquisitive tables on the church. Using the Vatican’s own archives, the soft-spoken Brown University professor and trustee at the American Academy in Rome has become arguably the most effective excavator of the Vatican’s hidden sins, especially those leading up to and during World War II.
The son of a rabbi who participated in the liberation of Rome as an Army chaplain, Mr. Kertzer grew up in a home that had taken in a foster child whose family was murdered in Auschwitz. That family background, and his activism in college against the Vietnam War, imbued him with a sense of moral outrage — tempered by a scholar’s caution.
*This article was originally published on The New York Times on May 27, 2022
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Special thanks to: Francesco Moises Bassano, Susanna Barki, Amanda Benjamin, Monica Bizzio, Angelica Edna Calò Livne, Eliezer Di Martino, Alain Elkann, Dori Fleekop, Daniela Fubini, Benedetta Guetta, Sarah Kaminski, Daniel Leisawitz, Annette Leckart, Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, Yaakov Mascetti, Francesca Matalon, Jonathan Misrachi, Anna Momigliano, Giovanni Montenero, Elèna Mortara, Sabina Muccigrosso, Lisa Palmieri Billig, Jazmine Pignatello, Shirley Piperno, Giandomenico Pozzi, Daniel Reichel, Colby Robbins, Danielle Rockman, Lindsay Shedlin, Michael Sierra, Rachel Silvera, Adam Smulevich, Simone Somekh, Rossella Tercatin, Ada Treves, Lauren Waldman, Sahar Zivan.
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Realizzato con il contributo di: Francesco Moises Bassano, Susanna Barki, Amanda Benjamin, Monica Bizzio, Angelica Edna Calò Livne, Alain Elkann, Dori Fleekop, Daniela Fubini, Benedetta Guetta, Sarah Kaminski, Daniel Leisawitz, Annette Leckart, Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, Yaakov Mascetti, Jonathan Misrachi, Anna Momigliano, Giovanni Montenero, Elèna Mortara, Sabina Muccigrosso, Lisa Palmieri Billig, Jazmine Pignatello, Shirley Piperno, Giandomenico Pozzi, Daniel Reichel, Colby Robbins, Danielle Rockman, Lindsay Shedlin, Michael Sierra, Adam Smulevich, Simone Somekh, Rossella Tercatin, Ada Treves, Lauren Waldman, Sahar Zivan.
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