Genoa remembers Jews deportation, ‘ghosts return to the past’ – Liguria
Rabbi, bewildered memory distortion. Mayor, city did little
No procession to the synagogue due to the weather alert, but the anniversary of the deportation of the Jews, organized by Sant’Egidio, the Jewish community and Primo Levi cultural center, remains a very important event for Genoa, especially in a historical period in which, as recalls the president of the Jewish community of Genoa Ariel dello Strologo, the memory is “a little mistreated”. About 600 participants in the Mazzini gallery, next to the “stumbling block” dedicated to Riccardo Pacifici, chief rabbi captured by the Nazi-fascists. “Surely we are witnessing a series of situations that we do not think we need to review – explains Dello Strologo – and which are the daughters of the social crisis we are experiencing, but it is indicative that especially in Italy the ghosts of the past are returning”. With regard to the Novara demonstration, where some participants wore the coats of the deportees, Dello Strologo defines “the death of ideas the idea of being able to do by focusing on image and clothes”. The demonstration is also heavily condemned by the mayor of Genoa Marco Bucci who the definition “totally unacceptable”. The mayor recalled that “many individuals besides the Church did a lot to save the Jews by helping them to leave Italy but the city did little. I will continue to forgive myself for this.”
The chief rabbi of Genoa Giuseppe Momigliano expressed “bewilderment and waiting for how memory is deformed” and defined the events in Novara as “serious because it means not grasping the teaching that the Shoah must transmit and risking retracing mistakes already made”. For Momigliano it is “also necessary to reflect on the methods of teaching and transmitting memory. Lately, much has been focused on transmitting emotions and sharing of feelings, but perhaps we need to reiterate better knowledge of the historical path that led to the Shoah”.
The ceremony was attended by among others Father Marco Tasca, archbishop of Genoa, Andrea Chiappori, head of the Community of Sant’Egidio in Liguria, the prefect Renato Franceschelli and the new commissioner of Genoa Orazio D’Anna.
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