Once again this year, Italian Embassies and Italian Cultural Institutes around the world have organised events to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the international commemoration held annually on 27 January in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. This date was chosen as it marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland by Soviet troops in 1945.
Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the voices of survivors resonated strongly, as they bore witness—before delegations from over 50 countries—to the enduring aspiration for a just society that respects human life.
Among the events organised:
The Italian Cultural Institute of Prague hosted a special focus on the “Righteous among the Nations“, highlighting individuals who selflessly aided Jews during the years of persecution. Among them was the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, who, between 1944 and 1945, saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation. The event opened with a screening of the film “Perlasca – An Italian Hero” by Alberto Negrin, starring Luca Zingaretti and Amanda Sandrelli.
The Italian Cultural Institute of Tokyo held a lecture by Professor Tonai Tetsuya titled “Segregation or symbiosis? The ghetto and Jews of Venice in the early modern period“. The talk explored the history of the Venetian Ghetto, drawing from Riccardo Calimani’s book “History of the ghetto of Venice 1516-2016“, which was recently translated into Japanese with the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
The Italian Cultural Institute of Lyon, in collaboration with CIDIM (Italian National Music Committee), organised the concert “ITalYa: Jewish songs from antiquity to the present, from the Middle East to the West”, featuring Delilah Gutman (vocals and narration) and Refael Negri (violin). Through a multilingual performance—including Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish, German, Italian, and Yiddish—the two artists took the audience on a journey through Jewish musical traditions from ancient times to today.
The Italian Cultural Institute of Sydney will screen the documentary “Il respiro di Shlomo” on 30 January. Produced by the Shoah Museum Foundation in collaboration with Rai Cinema, the film presents the testimony of Shlomo Venezia (1923–2012), a deportee and member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. His account, collected nearly 30 years ago by Holocaust historian Marcello Pezzetti and director Ruggero Gabbai, delves into themes such as the loss of one’s community, the pain of separation from loved ones, and the struggle for survival in inhumane conditions.
