A wide range of events take place to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp on January 27, 1945. 7,000 schoolchildren from all over Tuscany assembled in Florence’s Mandela Forum at 8am to pay their respects to the more than 300 Jews who were transported from Florence to Auschwitz. At 11.30, Mayor Dario Nardella laid a memorial wreath at Santa Maria Novella station, Platform 16, from where the train left Florence for Auschwitz.
Wreath at Platform 16, Santa Maria Novella station. Ph/ Marco Badiani
January 27 also sees the installation of Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto (the Western Wailing Wall) in the Sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio. This work, presented by artist Fabio Mauri (1926-2009) at the Venice Biennale in 1993, is a tessellation of old suitcases and trunks, symbolic of the centuries of Jewish exile and wandering. It will be on display in the Palazzo Vecchio until February 23. A retrospective on Mauri’s work is on at the contemporary art Museo del Novecento, which today is offering free entrance.
‘Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto’ (the Western Wailing Wall) in the Sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio.
The Holocaust is also remembered at the city’s municipal libraries, with book presentations, readings, educational activities and children’s workshops. At 5.30pm in the Biblioteca della Oblate, Daniel Vogelmann presents Anna-Vera Sullam Calimani’s A Name for Extermination. The Holocaust is also remembered at the city’s municipal libraries, with book presentations, readings, educational activities and children’s workshops. At the Biblioteca della Oblate, 5.30pm, Daniel Vogelmann presents Anna-Vera Sullam Calimani’s A Name for Extermination; while from 4pm the Biblioteca Villa Bardini hosts ‘Where was God at Auschwitz?’, a historical-philosophical reflection on the Holocaust, chaired by Professor Salvatore Tassinari.
The Ex3 centre in Gavinana has been home to a memorial since 2015, which commemorates the Italians who died in Auschwitz. Visitors walk through a helix while listening to the music of Luigi Nono and the words of Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, whose experience in the camps is told in his book Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man). Another reading recommendation is Giorgio Bassani’s Il romanzo di Ferrara (The Novel of Ferrara), which recalls the darkness as it gathered over Italy in the late 1930s.
