Good morning everyone! This year too, the Day of Remembrance reminds us of our responsibility towards the most terrible event in history, the Shoah; this responsibility of ours, in the 2000s, consists in perpetuating the living memory of that monstrosity and documenting it in every way, until the last survivor is alive and beyond, so that no one can say "I did not know". This is an accessible tourism blog, it's true; within our modest limits we decided to show some traces of the memory of the Shoah that we encountered in our travels. Let's start with Berlin, of which unfortunately in 2012 we were unable to visit the Holocaust Museum (indeed, if any of you have some photos, we can integrate them in this post, quoting the author, of course). Let's immediately see the Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust, already illustrated some time ago:
But other monuments with relative tombstones can be encountered while moving around the city, like this one (we are not able to translate the German text, but we do not think it can be wrong, since we are talking about Auschwitz and Theresienstadt):
In Berlin, but in many other European cities, it is possible to meet the so-called "stumbling stones" in the streets, that is to say small metal plates inserted in the pavement, which show the names and dates of birth and death of the deportees in concentration camps:
Another commemorative plaque is posted on the wall of the Synagogue:
From Berlin we now pass to Pitigliano, a beautiful village in Tuscany that has always been home to a large Jewish community. When we visited it in 2014, the Synagogue was not wheelchair accessible. Too bad, because it has been transformed into a very interesting museum that can also be visited by tourists. If any of you are aware of the completion of work to make the structure accessible, kindly let us know and we will try to dedicate a post to you; for the moment here is a commemorative plaque of the Pitiglianesi Jews who disappeared in the fields:
And we are pleased to publish a contribution from our friend Orietta, who sent us the photo of the stumbling block placed in Padua in front of the entrance to the former Civic Museum; the stone recalls Father Placido Cortese, arrested in 1944, brought to Trieste and tortured to death by the Gestapo:
Another important contribution of our friend Orietta is that relating to the monument dedicated to children in Lidice, in the Czech Republic. Below is the text she sent us: The sculpture was started in 1969 by the Czech artist Marie Uchytilova-Kucova, born in 1924, who dedicated the last years of her life to this commemorative project, and it was so demanding that she could not finish it. It took two decades to create eighty-two life-size plaster statues of children. And before her death, in 1989, she only managed to complete three in bronze, using her savings. The work was completed by her husband Jiri V. Hampl, who continued the work alone: the first 30 children in bronze were "returned" to Lidice in 1995, the others were added gradually until 2000. Today , 22 years after the end of the work and 53 from its beginning, the statue is even more moving: the weather has damaged the bronze, giving the statues even more drama. The children's sculptures are located near the mass graves of Lidice.
Even in Naples, our city, there were several victims of the Holocaust, even though the city was liberated from the Nazis as early as October 1, 1943; perhaps the most significant case is that of Sergio De Simone, a seven-year-old boy arrested in Fiume (today Rijeka) in 1944 and killed at the end of a series of experiments conducted on his body. A newly inaugurated stumbling block has been dedicated to him and placed on the sidewalk in front of his house in Vomero, in Via Morghen:
Also in Naples, precisely in Piazza Bovio at number 33, nine stumbling blocks have been installed dedicated to as many Neapolitan Jews who lived there and who were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered:
In Novara, in Piazza Santa Caterina da Siena, two stumbling blocks have been installed dedicated to Amadio Jona and Giacomo Diena, uncle and nephew deported to Auschwitz and murdered there (contribution by our friend Giovanna).
We close with a good leap back in time: in 1506 an epochal massacre of Jews was perpetrated in Lisbon, which today is documented in this stele located in Rossio, the most important square of the Portuguese capital, where the massacre was perpetrated. To demonstrate that the malaplant of anti-Semitism has deep roots and is widespread all over the world, and the belated apologies of some ridiculous TV personality are not enough to erase the faults engraved in the living flesh of those who have suffered the consequences:
