The College Arts and Humanities Institute (CAHI) is pleased to announce the following film series on the representation of the Holocaust in Italy:
The Department of French & Italian presents
La Shoah
L'orrore da non dimenticare
A film series to commemorate the Holocaust in Italy.
February 23-26, 2009
January 27, in Italy, is Memorial Day, and coincides with the liberation of the prisoners from Auschwitz. While there are still people who deny the Holocaust, the goal of this film series is that of preserving the memory as well as stressing the effects of the racial laws in Italy and in other European countries.
Monday, February 23, 5:15 pm
Swain Hall West 119
Concorrenza sleale (Unfair Competition)
A film by Ettore Scola (2001)
Rome 1938: What happens to Umberto, a Catholic (Diego Abatantuono) and Leone, a Jew (Sergio Castellitto), who both own a men's clothing store, on the same street, after the racial laws are approved in Italy ? In Italian with no English subtitles.
Tuesday, February 24, 5:15 pm
Morrison Hall 007
Memoria (Memory)
A documentary by Ruggero Gabbai
The first Italian documentary on the Italian Jews deported to Auschwitz – the director, Ruggero Gabbai, interviewed some of the 830 survivors of the 8,500 Italian Jews deported. The documentary also includes scenes of the barracks where they were held. In Italian with no English subtitles.
Wednesday, February 25, 5:15 pm
Morrison Hall 007
Volevo solo vivere (I only Wanted to Live)
A documentary by Mimmo Calopresti, 75 minutes
Interviews with Italians who survived the Nazi-Fascist deportation. In Italian with English subtitles.
Thursday, February 26, 5:15 pm
Morrison Hall 007
La tregua (The Truce or The Awakening)
A film by Francesco Rosi (1996)
Follows the release and the return to Italy of Italian chemist turned author Primo Levi from Auschwitz. The film is a careful adaptation of Levi’s second book on his experience in the concentration camp. It took filmmaker Francesco Rosi 10 years to make the film. The journey home took Levi and his few companions through many different countries. Through his companions and his new experiences, his appreciation of life and freedom slowly returns. (In English)
Background: Racism against Jews in Fascist Italy
« È tempo che gli Italiani si proclamino francamente razzisti. Tutta l'opera che finora ha fatto il Regime in Italia è in fondo del razzismo. Frequentissimo è stato sempre nei discorsi del Capo il richiamo ai concetti di razza. La questione del razzismo in Italia deve essere trattata da un punto di vista puramente biologico, senza intenzioni filosofiche o religiose. La concezione del razzismo in Italia deve essere essenzialmente italiana e l'indirizzo arianonordico. »
(La difesa della razza, anno I, numero 1, 5 agosto 1938, p. 2)
Gennaro Marciano. Tuteliamo e Difendiamo la Sanità della Razza! Rome: Stabilimento Tipografico Europa, 1933.
The question of defending the Italian race came up precociously -- five years before the regime promulgated its discriminatory laws -- in this appeal for a concerted campaign against tuberculosis.
Paolo Orano. Gli Ebrei in Italia. 2nd ed. Rome: Casa Editrice Pinciana, 1938.
Orano's diatribe (first published in 1937) provided the intellectual premise for the racial laws directed by Mussolini's government against its Jewish subjects in the course of 1938. This subtle, nuanced, but devastating attack on Italy's forty thousand Jews for their alleged Zionist sympathies, championing of "degenerate" avant-garde cultural expressions, and doubtful loyalty to the Fascist regime and its imperial claims, was an ominous prelude to the impending storm. Prompt responses to Orano's work by prominent Jewish figures, also exhibited here, were to no avail.
Abramo Levi. Noi Ebrei. Rome: Casa Editrice Pinciana, 1937.
Levi's Noi Ebrei, a response to Paolo Orano's Gli Ebrei in Italia, is primarily an anthology of contemporary writings intended to demonstrate that the Jews in Italy, totaling a mere forty thousand in a population of forty-three million, did not constitute a problem for Italian society, but were instead loyal, fully integrated citizens, for the majority of whom Zionism had scarce appeal. Mussolini's racial laws discriminating against Jews and depriving them of most of their civil rights were promulgated the following year.
For more information, please contact Professor Antonio Vitti, ancvitti@indiana.edu
If you have a disability and need assistance, accommodations can be made to meet most needs. Please call 855-5458.
