(January 9, 2017) “Italy and the memory of the Holocaust: the paradox of Auschwitz. From the myth of innocence to selective memory, with a look to the memory of the Holocaust in the Netherlands “. This is the title of the conference that the Italian Institute of Culture in the Netherlands organizes for January 27 (19 hours), International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The conference will be held by historian Laura Fontana, responsible for Italy at the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris. The event will be in Italian, with simultaneous translation in Dutch. “As we have moved, in Italy, from the silence of a national history page to a narrative no longer hidden but partial and selective that appears to be based more on the symbolism of evil opposite to the good and the infinite multiplication of the Train of Memory and educational trips Auschwitz than on a serious historical knowledge? – Asks Laura Fontana – Why the example of the Italian rescuers (the Righteous), – certainly bright but rather minor – it is not balanced by an equal attention to the role played by the local persecutors and liabilities of Italian companies with respect to the persecution of citizens of Jewish origin? Can we draw some parallels with the history, very different, of the Holocaust in the Netherlands that will help to better understand if the example of Italy is a paradigmatic case, or a constant of Western European memory? “. (Red)
