ROME – Mayor Gianni Alemanno and the municipal authorities of Rome will be
announcing on Tuesday the construction of a Holocaust museum as a focal point in
the city’s 10-year “Stati Generali” plan for major projects in the
city.
The Italian government and RAI-TV are currently sponsoring a
television spot, which will be shown repeatedly until June, calling for Italians
to submit any relevant wartime family records or material for
exhibition.
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Holocaust museum unveils returned art Italy’s first Holocaust museum, based on preliminary plans
drawn by architects Luca Zevi and Giorgio Maria Tamburini under the sponsorship
of Rome’s previous mayor, Walter Veltroni, will be built in the central area of
Villa Torlonia. The 2,500- square-meter building – estimated at a cost of 19
million euros, to be covered by the city – will be part of a designated
4,000-sq.m. area adjacent to both former dictator Benito Mussolini’s villa and
the two millennium-old Jewish catacombs, that will be restored and opened for
visits.
Other Stati Generali projects include modernizing Fiumicino
Airport, improving the street network and restoring ancient cultural
sites.
The museum’s director, Marcello Pezzetti, has a vast plan in mind,
specifically aimed at increasing Italians’ awareness of their own role in the
Holocaust.
“Italy, like Austria, was a partner of Nazi Germany – not a
victim, as the populace generally holds. Unlike Germany, we have never even
begun the process of soul-searching. Italians don’t feel involved – they
do not consider themselves as having collaborated,” he explained.
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“This
museum, which will cover global Holocaust history but will have a special
section on Italy, will speak directly to Italians, and not just Italian Jews,”
he continued.
“When the Nazis, aided by Italian Fascists, raided the
ghetto of Rome on October 16, 1943, they knew very well what the fate of all the
1,125 deported would be,” he asserted, adding, “We will be telling a story that
will, unfortunately, unveil a black heart, but the formation of contemporary
Italian identity – including that of new immigrants – must incorporate this
knowledge.”
The museum will be divided into three sections: archives, a
library and a vast video collection. It will cost approximately $30
million.
The section on Italy promises to draw extreme interest, with
documentation on the country’s most famous controversial wartime issues. It will
explore both the positive and negative roles of the Vatican – its proverbial
silence during the 1943 deportations, contrasted with the opening of its
institutions to thousands of Jewish refugees; and its helping Jews by providing
false documents, but also helping Nazis flee to South America after the
war. Evidence will be shown regarding traitors, as well as Righteous
Italians who risked their lives to save Jewish fellow citizens.
The
conversion and resignation of Rome’s chief rabbi, Israel Zolli (later known as
Eugenio, Pope Pius XII’s first name), at the height of Nazi persecutions will be
addressed, as will the stories of many other Italian rabbis who, unlike Zolli,
stayed on to care for their communities until their bitter end as martyrs, will
also be shown.
Another section will focus on the ongoing work of Patrick
Desbois, a Catholic priest who has uncovered and dug up previously unknown and
hidden mass graves in northeastern Europe where Nazis murdered over 1.5 million
Jews in the towns and hamlets of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other
countries.
Pezzetti and Leone Paserman – president of the Shoah Museum
Foundation – plan to characterize the new museum as a place for research and
work-inprogress, particularly for students and teachers. Courses will be
organized, and there will be many temporary exhibitions and events.
The
mass murder of gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, homosexuals,
political prisoners, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others will be part of
the permanent exhibition.
In addition, there will be events touching on
the Holocaust’s relevance to more recent history, linking it with knowledge of
other genocides and racist persecutions such as in North Africa under the
colonialist powers, Armenia, Biafra, Sudan, Communist Russia, and China under
Mao Zedong.
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