Giorno della Memoria 2007

Centro Primo Levi jointly with the Consulate General of Italy, the Italian Cultural Institute, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo, and the Italian Academy at Columbia University sponsors a series of programs and city events to commemorate the victims of the Nazi extermination camps. Between 1938 and 1945 European Nazi and Fascist regimes, and the people who supported them, annihilated millions of Jews and thousands of homosexuals, handicapped, mentally ill, and gypsies, they had labeled as “stranger,” “unwanted,” and “subhuman”. Prejudice and racial hatred put a halt to the lives of millions of individuals and devastated the societies in which this crime was perpetrated. On January 27, 1945 the Soviet Army entered and liberated the extermination camp of Auschwitz, starting the beginning of the liberation process.

January 27 – Center for Jewish History

Centro Primo Levi premieres “The Island of Roses. The Tragedy of a Paradise” a documentary film by Rebecca Samonà (59′ in Italian with English subtitles). Through the memories of women including her mother, the author reconstructs the life and annihilation of the Jews of Rhodes from the beginning of the Italian colonization in 1912, to the deportation to Auschwitz in 1944. Combining era footage with a delicate personal commentary, Samonà offers a glimpse into a centuries-old culture, which a handful of survivors infused into a younger generation that is today scattered around the world. Andrea Fiano (journalist) will interview Stella Levi, survivor from Rhodes, on her experience of the anti-semitic persecutions and the extermination camps.

January 28 – Italian Cultural Institute

Women Remember – Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University) and Millicent Marcus (Yale University) and Stella Levi (Centro Primo Levi) discuss women’s memory and the recollections of Giuliana Tedeschi and Rosetta Loy, two Italians who experienced the anti-semitic persecution from opposite perspectives: that of a Jewish woman in an extermination camp and that of a non-Jewish child who observes. Actress Maria Tucci will read excerpts from the memoirs of Giuliana Tedeschi, Rosetta Loy, Piera Sonnino.

January 28 – 8:30 am – 4:30 pm. Consulate General of Italy and Italian Cultural Institute

Park Avenue/68 St. Reading of the names of the Italian victims of the Shoah. “There are no tombstones for the victims of the Shoah but only our good will to make time to remember them and let the wind carry the sound of their names.” (Stella Levi).

January 29 – Italian Academy at Columbia University

Italian Fascist Race Laws and the Manifesto della Razza: How Law and Science Can be Racist. David Freedberg (Italian Academy), Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU), Lidia Santarelli (NYU) and Alexander Stille (Columbia University).

February 5 – New York University Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò

Italy without Nuremberg: a conversation with Michele Battini