Having trouble viewing this email? Click here June 27, 2022 – 28 Sivan 5782

Par Daniel Reichel 

“Le titre du livre La sola colpa di essere nati (La seule faute d’être nés) est le déroulement de ma pensée, vu que j’ai été une victime pour la seule faute d’être née. Ce que je ne m’attendais pas, c’était qu’il deviendrait une trace de l’examen de fin d’études". Au téléphone avec Pagine Ebraiche, la sénatrice à vie Liliana Segre exprime sa surprise et sa reconnaissance pour le choix du ministère de l’Éducation d’utiliser son témoignage concernant les lois racistes comme l’une des dissertations proposées aux étudiants pour l’examen d’état de cette année. [In Italie “L’esame di maturità” est l’examen qui a lieu à la fin des cinq années de lycée. C’est l’équivalent du baccalauréat français]. 
En effet, parmi les traces pour l’analyse d’un texte argumentative il y a “La sola colpa di essere nati" (Garzanti), un essai conçu par Liliana Segre et l’ancien magistrat Gherardo Colombo. C’est un signal important, souligne la sénatrice à vie qui a survécu à Auschwitz, “soit pour les jeunes qui obtiennent toutes ses informations avec ses téléphones portables, soit pour leurs parents, qui à l’époque de la persécution n’étaient pas encore nés. Et qui souvent ignorent ce qui s’est passé".
Il est symbolique aussi, ajoute Segre, le fait que “précisément en ces heures, tandis que les jeunes passent l’examen de fin d’études, se termine la première année de travail de la Commission contre la haine. Rappelons-nous que, dès le premier jour, elle n’a pas été approuvée à l’unanimité; bien que l’objectif de la Commission était la lutte contre l’incitation à la haine, beaucoup de personnes ont essayé de faire des exceptions. Cependant, à la fin, les conclusions ont été votées par tous et toutes".
Autre coïncidence significative, ajoute Segre, est que “mon petit-fils, qui a dix-huit ans, est en train de faire l’examen de fin d’études. Et parmi les dissertations il retrouve le titre inattendu sur sa grand-mère, qui a passé sa vie à expliquer qu’on peut être tués pour la seule faute d’être nés".

Traduction de Erika Centazzo, révisée par Alice Pugliese, étudiantes à l’École Supérieure de Langues Modernes pour les Interprètes et les Traducteurs de l’Université de Trieste, stagiaires dans le bureau du journal de l’Union des communautés juives italiennes – Pagine Ebraiche.

In the book written with Gherardo Colombo, the Senator For Life Liliana Segre tells her own life journey, starting from the shame of the Racial Laws in 1938 and the resulting suffering of being expelled from school. A written work that invites the reader “never to turn the eyes away from injustice, to make sure that the darkest pages of our history are never repeated”. 
Introducing this work among high school graduation essays is not a predictable choice, as Colombo pointed out to Pagine Ebraiche. He invited us to reflect on Segre's words and their meaning. "I hope that in this period of such widespread hatred, Liliana Segre's feeling, her life, her choice not to hate despite what she went through, will be useful. "It is a way - Colombo underlines - to show that there is a different path compared to the endless number of wars we have around us, compared to the hatred that runs on social networks". As a former magistrate, he then hopes that the students will also remember the post-war efforts to restore justice, to respond to the discriminatory laws of the fascist regime with the norms of democracy. "I hope that in some essays will be mentioned the attempt of our Constitution to banish discrimination once and for all. And thus the attempt to create a society that is as inclusive as possible. We will see what will come out. I have met thousands of students over the years, but most importantly, Liliana has met them. And I wondered what will they remember of her story".
Marcello Pezzetti shared this question. With his colleague Liliana Picciotto in the 1990s, he had accompanied Segre to platform 21, from where she was deported to Auschwitz with her father Alberto in January '44. "Thirty years have now passed since that moment, a Holocaust Memorial was erected there. And now we wonder what awareness there is in our society, in young people, in regard to our past. The ministry's important choice of the essay topic on Segre - he says - can help us understand where we are. Did the Italian students arrived at what in Germany is called Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the awareness of one's past?".
While waiting for answers on the subject, the topic of Racial Laws included in the essays of the "Matura", the Italian graduation exam, is in itself a positive sign, Picciotto points out. "It tells us that our rulers have understood the importance of that historical passage, also thanks to Segre's constant work. And we can clearly see that this is an excellent opportunity for everyone, both children and parents, to reflect on the past. It is an opportunity for a national awareness" adds the historian of the Cdec (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) in Milan.

Translated by Alice Pugliese, student at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, intern at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.

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On the occasion of CasaleComics&Games, the Jewish community in Casale Monferrato (Piedmont, Italy), hosts an exhibition dedicated to one of the internationally most renowned Israeli cartoonists: Asaf Hanuka. Forty panels will be shown in cooperation with Bao Publishing and mON (the organizer of Casale Comics). The exhibition, curated by the journalist Ada Treves, is entitled “Diario di un Realista” and retraces the themes of the award-winning autobiographical comics by Asaf Hanuka, published in Italian by Bao Publishing in three volumes under the title “KO a Tel Aviv”. Born in 1974, Asaf Hanuka co-created with his twin brother Tomer Bipolar, a comic book series which was nominated for the Ignatz and the Eisner Awards. He contributed to the production of the Oscar nominated animation film Waltz with Bashir.  
His award-winning autobiographical comics The Realist is published weekly in Calcalist - Israeli business magazine – and on his personal blog. In Italy, it was released by the publishing house Bao Publishing, and it has been entitled K.O. a Tel Aviv.  

Above, a panel by Asaf Hanuka against the suggestive background of the synagogue of Casale Monferrato.

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By Ada Treves 
 
Telling world in the surroundings and telling about oneself, one panel a week, one problem at a time. This is how “The Realist”, a blog by Asaf Hanuka was born. Originally, it was published in Israel on the business magazine The Calcalist, which in 2010 commissioned him a comic strip dedicated to economics problems. It was first time that the Israeli cartoonist – winner of major international cartoon awards, among which Gran Guinigi Price in 2015 and Eisner Award in 2016- drew himself. And it was a discovery. One thing that came so easy to him and that led him to a sort of irreverent self-analysis in which the personal and the universal intertwine and feed off each other, enriching themselves with new paradoxes. 
The panels for this exhibition come from this material which, collected in three volumes, was published in Italy under the title “KO a Tel Aviv” (English version “The Realist”) thanks to the publishing house Bao Publishing. A specific choice, despite the fact that Asaf Hanuka has published much more, including the recent “Sono ancora vivo” with Roberto Saviano, comics that made the artist more famous in Italy. In “The Realist”, the source of inspiration is often a problem, something that can cause frustrations, confusion, fear. A tiny conflict, often personal, that becomes the starting point to tell a story that touches everybody. Something difficult that becomes light. A moment of sadness that can make us smile.  
Whether the drawings are about family matters, the infinite contradictions of Israeli society or the telling of one's own traditions, the core remains unvaried. The main theme is always a hard-to-be-defined identity: a Jew who does not believe in God, an Arabic Israeli citizen, a successful drawer who is not much self-confident.  Someone who hides a secret identity. A superhero, just like the ones we all draw. Or someone who thinks that what defines us the most is what we keep for ourselves rather than what we let the others see.  
 
Translated by Margherita Francese and revised by Alice Pugliese, students at the Advanced School 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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Lessons from America: a right attained is not forever.
 
*Social historian of ideas

 

Por Anna Buj*

“Si hoy le escribo es para rogarle que me ayude desde lejos”. Así se expresaba un estudiante universitario alemán, “de origen israelí”, de 23 años, a una amiga italiana. Había sido encerrado en el campo de concentración de Miranda del Ebro, como tantos otros judíos que cruzaban los Pirineos para escapar del nazismo. La carta la firma Werner Barasch, el 17 de enero del 1942, urgiendo que su conocida llamase la atención de Pío XII para pedirle ayuda. Podía tomar un barco desde Lisboa para reunirse con su madre en EE.UU., pero se le reclamaba la intervención de “una persona de fuera” para que las autoridades permitiesen su liberación. Quería que el papa mediase a través del nuncio en Madrid. “Otros con esta intervención de Roma han podido dejar el campo de concentración”.

*Este articulo fue publicado en La Vanguardia el Zenit el 23 de junio de 2022. 

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