International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023
In 2000, the Italian Government instituted the International Holocaust Remembrance Day to commemorate the victims of Nazi brutality during WWII. Since then and every year, in Italy and abroad, on the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, January 27, as per the UN resolution dated 2005, all representatives of the Sistema Paese commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and Nazism.
The second event that the Institute is dedicating in 2023 to this commemoration will consist in the presentation and reading, by teachers of Italian of several Universities, in particular the UTS-University of Technology, of literary passages and poems dedicated to the theme of the Holocaust. The evening will open with a welcom address by the Italian Ambassador Paolo Crudele and the Consul General of Italy Andrea De Felip, followed by a brief presentation of the project called stumbling stones (Stolpersteine), i.e. brass cobblestones inserted into the pavement in front of the homes of the victims of deportations to the concentration camps. The stones, which appear in several cities around the world, bear the names of the victims engraved on them, as well as the dates of their capture and, when they are known, those of their deaths
During the evening Dr Marco Sonzogni of the University of Wellington (New Zealand), curator of the book The occasional demon by Primo Levi – presented in the past at the Italian Cultural Institute in Sydney – will also give a brief speech online from New Zealand.
The passages that will be read (both in Italian and in English) during the evening are excerpts from works by, among others, Edith Bruck, Primo Levi, Liliana Segre and Giorgio Bassani.
Speakers are: Rabbi Benjamin Elton (The Great Synagogue, Sydney), Alice Loda and Emanuela Moretto (UTS and Istituto Italiano di Cultura), Giulia Torello-Hill (University of New England), Maria Cristina Mauceri (University of Sydney), Marco Sonzogni (University of Wellington, NZ).
Free entry. Limited seats.
Booking essential: www.eventbrite.com.au