Having trouble viewing this email? Click here March 27, 2023 – 5 Nissan 5783


  

Italian President Sergio Mattarella paid tribute last week to the victims of the WWII Ardeatine Caves massacre outside Rome on the 79th anniversary of the killings. In a ceremony attended by the highest State authority, a laurel wreath was laid at the site on Rome's southern outskirts where on March 24, 1944, 335 Italians were executed by Nazi officers in a reprisal for a partisan attack that killed 33 German soldiers in central Rome on a street near the Trevi Fountain.
The commemoration was attended, among others, by Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, Lower House and Senate speakers Lorenzo Fontana and Ignazio La Russa, Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri, UCEI President Noemi Di Segni, the Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni, the president of the Jewish community of Rome Ruth Dureghello, and Head of the Public Affairs Department of the Israeli Embassy in Italy Smadar Shapira.
The relatives of Marian Reicher and Heinz Tuchman, two victims of the nazi-fascist massacre who thanks to DNA exams have recently been given an identity, were also present along with students and associations. In the grandstand set up near the entrance to the quarries there was Deborah Lipstadt, special envoy of the US administration for the fight against antisemitism, who had been a guest of the UCEI for a discussion on the challenges and perspectives of her commitment, and Holocaust survivor and witness Tatiana Bucci.

Photo Quirinale

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Paintings, sculptures, jewelry, and precious artifacts. As the war has been ravaging Ukraine, the tragedy of lost lives and devastations is being accompanied by the systematic plundering of the country's artistic and cultural heritage, in the name of its so-called "protection". According to international art experts, the looting ongoing in Russian-occupied areas may be the biggest art theft since the Nazis pillaged Europe during WWII. Back then as now, it is the culture, pride, and identity of a nation that comes under attack. And is a heartbreaking offense, as evidenced by the exhibition " Arte Libera. Masterpieces saved from war” set up in the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome.
Curated by Luigi Gallo and Raffaella Morselli, the exhibition (until 10 April) offers an extraordinary glance at a hundred masterpieces saved during the Second World War together with many documents, images, and recordings brought together thanks to the collaboration of over forty museums and institutes.
It is a compelling account of a dramatic period for Italy and at the same time a tribute to those who, despite the risks, then took the path of courage and in the name of the common interest claimed the universal value of the Fine arts administration, often forcibly retired after refusing to join the Republic of Salò - which amid the conflict, with the help of art historians and representatives of the Vatican hierarchies, have become the protagonists of a great undertaking to safeguard Italian artistic and cultural heritage.

Above, the Discobolus Lancellotti, a Roman copy of the famous bronze by Mirone and one of the exhibition highlights.

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By Daniela Gross

The Community's centuries-old collection is loaded onto a special train bound for Germany two days before the Jews of Rome are deported. An immense heritage of history, knowledge and tradition is thus snatched from Italian Judaism - seven thousand texts dating back to the late Middle Ages and including codices, incunabula and books made by extraordinary printers such as the Soncino, Bomberg, Bragadin and Giustiniani between the 16th and 18th centuries. There were 25 examples hidden elsewhere and three thousand volumes, mostly prayer books printed at the end of the 19th century, which the Nazis deemed of little interest. What happened after the departure of the train is, however, shrouded in mystery. After the war, thanks to the work of the Italian Restitution Mission headed by Rodolfo Siviero, the texts from the library of the Rabbinical College stolen a few months later were found and returned. Despite the research and efforts of the various institutions, the Community's bibliographic heritage seems to have vanished into thin air.
As historian Serena Di Nepi - who in the catalogue of the exhibition Arte liberata reconstructs the raid and its impact in a fine essay - explains to Pagine Ebraiche, two questions still weigh heavily on that event: What books were stolen? And what happened to them?
Even today, it is still not known exactly what was included in the collection. For what reason?
The reasons are historical. Starting with the first Inquisition Index, which banned or expurgated many Jewish texts, Jews avoided cataloguing their libraries in order to protect them from censorship. Searches in the ghettos were as frequent as the seizure of books. Therefore, summaries from earlier periods were used for study and texts are imported from the Ottoman Levant or Amsterdam. In later times, Emancipation entailed a loss of Jewish culture and books therefore ended up relegated to some office or rabbi's room. It was not until the 1930s and a generation of great scholars such as Attilio Milano, Umberto Cassuto or Isaiah Sonne that libraries returned to the centre of attention.

The image above is drawn from I-Tal-Yah Books, the large-scale cataloguing project of Jewish books in Italy carried out by UCEI in collaboration with the National Central Library of Rome, the National Library of Israel and the support of Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
 
Translated by Maria Cianciuolo and revised by Onda Carofiglio, 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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The looting of Rome’s Jewish Community Libraries and of the Rabbinical College has been carefully planned. On 30th September 1943, the men from the Einsatztab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, one of the two Nazi organisations specialised in plundering Jewish artwork, books, and archives, carry out an initial inspection.
They come back again the next day, and the president of the Jewish community, Ugo Foà, runs for cover. He hides 25 volumes, the ones of greatest value, first inside the community and then, helped by the parish priest, in the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella. The Nazis show up again on 11th October. They have made arrangements with the shippers Otto and Rosani and three days later the precious collection of the Jewish Library is loaded onto two freight wagons and leaves for an unknown destination. Two days later, on 16th October, over a thousand Jews are captured in Rome and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 16 of them will return.

Above, a Pentateuch printed in Amsterdam, returned to the Jewish community of Rome during the post-war period.
 
Translated by Klara Mattiussi, revised by Margherita Francese, 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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Un livre de prières féministe du XVe siècle, un Coran commandé par une grande dame, les œuvres d'une illustratrice et d'une héroïne nationale : il y a de quoi être fier. En l'honneur du Mois de l'histoire des femmes, nous nous sommes associés à la Bibliothèque nationale d'Israël pour vous présenter dix trésors qui célèbrent les femmes à travers l'histoire. L'étonnante collection couvre des siècles d'histoire, de multiples lieux géographiques et différentes religions. Les articles choisis représentent les collections principales de la Bibliothèque nationale d'Israël - Israël, Judaïca, Islam et Moyen-Orient, sciences humaines et musique - qui ont toutes été enrichies par le statut de la Bibliothèque en tant qu'entité indépendante, et dont certaines seront bientôt présentées dans la publication "101 Trésors de la Bibliothèque nationale d'Israël".
 
* Cet article a été originellement publié sur Alliance le 24 mars 2023

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