The Nobel Peace Prize to the Memorial Association
News that fills us with joy: the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Russian association Memorial, headquartered in Moscow, present at the 2022 Meeting with the exhibition “Men despite everything. Stories from Memorial ”, created by the Russian Christian Foundation and by Memorial, and with a dedicated conference. The exhibition (here the link with the detailed description and the videos) was born from two exhibition itineraries created in recent years in Moscow by Memorial on the basis of its archives and museum collections: the first, dedicated to the letters that fathers wrote to their children and families from light beer; the second, on the universe in the camps, on small objects (embroidery, drawings, puppets), which mothers in the camps made up for their children, in a desperate attempt to keep alive a bond that due to the passing of the years and the propaganda of the regime it seemed inexorably destined to break. Through these correspondences and these objects – sometimes poor, naive, sometimes testimonies of a surprising creativity – extraordinary stories of humanity, friendship, pain and truth emerge, documenting the passion for man who is preserved in the most intimate fibers. of the person. In each section “voices” alternate that not the inhuman conditions, aimed precisely at humiliating, annihilating the person, and others that speak of the regained dignity, of a “good” that can shine everywhere and, despite everything, allow us to remain men. The exhibition is built on texts, videos and photos (the Memorial collections presented at the Meeting are currently under sequestration). The exhibition “Men despite everything. Storie da Memorial ”will be presented in these weeks in various Italian cities in itinerant form, by Meeting Mostre. Reattaching the thread of memory, this is the theme of the Conference “The thread of memory and the flower of hope” – which saw the exponents of Memorial at the Meeting as protagonists. Being capable of memory means giving back a face, a history, a dignity to men and women who seemed to have been swallowed up forever by the spiral of violence of the past, but above all, retracing the events, also to note with amazement that the human flourishes again in the most inhuman situations. . We can cling to this tenacious thread even today, in situations where we need to relearn, stammer, words like freedom, responsibility, sacrifice, and then love, forgiveness, mercy. We need to learn to share the pain without letting our hearts be clouded by feelings of resentment and revenge, to leave room for the possibility of a daily miracle.
cs Meeting Rimini