“THEThe memory of the extermination of millions of Jewish people and of other faiths it can neither be forgotten nor denied. There can be no fraternity without first dispelling the roots of hatred and violence that fueled the horror of the Holocaust”. This was stated by Pope Francis in a tweet on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day”.
Remembrance Day, celebrated on January 27 each year as a day to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, was established by resolution 60/7 of the United Nations General Assembly of 1 November 2005.
Here are the 4 books to read in order not to forget.
1/ Books to read. “The second floor”
Rita Armenians. The second floor. Ponte alle Grazie
Why read it
Armeni’s new novel tells the incredible and true story of a Roman convent of nuns that she hid some families who escaped the roundup of the Ghetto during the Second World War.
In a Franciscan convent on the outskirts, between the scents of the garden and a new neighborhood under construction, Sister Ignazia and her sisters find themselves in the surreal situation of hosting a German infirmary and, secondly, some families who miraculously escaped the Ghetto roundup. To separate them, only a ladder and the mild audacity of those who don’t hesitate to get involved all the way. Rome, in the last year of the war, was not an “open city”.
The Germans, one step away from defeat, they squeeze it in an increasingly ruthless grip, the allies are struggling to arrive, the Romans fight by paying for every act of rebellion with blood. In a city destroyed by hunger, by bombs, by terror, Jews are persecuted, deported, killed, like the most dangerous and grim of enemies. And the Church? While the Nazi surrender is negotiated in secret in the Vatican and the pontiff chooses, more or less openly, the path of caution, the sacred places open to welcome – defying the rules and even some commandments – who needs it. This is how Ritanna Armeni, with the rigorous and profound enthusiasm ever, goes through a crucial passage in our history and gives shape to an exemplary story, which speaks of courage and sisterhood, of strength and creativity, of joy, fear, resistance.
Info. Rita Armeni. The second floor. Ponte alle Grazie
2/ Books to read. “At Donna Mussolini’s house”
Why read it
Lajos is a cultured Hungarian Jewish engineer who moved to Rome. Maria is a young Italian Catholic, with strong social and political passions. Their love story, which blossomed in the thirties, is in itself a challenge to fate, in a country where marriage between people of different nationalities and religions is complicated. It is even more so under fascism: with the beginning of the persecutions against the Jews, their everyday life as a wealthy bourgeois family, built with commitment in Forlì, crumbles with impressive speed.
As the regime cracks down one after another, Lajos loses his citizenship, his job, finally risks losing his freedom and life and is forced to flee with his wife and three children, one of whom is seriously ill. In solidarity with Romagna, the rescue network directs them to a generous lady, Edvige Mancini, who lives in a large house in the village of Premilcuore. Only the lady doesn’t know they’re Jewish. And the Szegös don’t know that the maiden name of that kind woman is Mussolini: she is the sister of the Duce and hosts, upstairs, also a German command. The existence of Lajos and Maria and their children becomes, if possible, even more dangerous and uncertain. And the war shows no sign of ending.
Eighty years after the events, one of those three children is narrating this incredible story on a bench near their home, Alberto Szego. From his fortuitous meeting with Cristina Petit will be born a sincere friendship and this true story from the novel step, which interweaves twentieth-century history and family lexicon, tragedy and hope: an adventure through time and memory.
Info. Cristina Petit. Alberto Szego. At Donna Mussolini’s house. Solferino
3/ Books to read. “Villa of the seminar”
Why read it
Tuscan Maremma, November ’43. Le Case is a village far from everything. Seen from there, even war has a different flavour; mostly waiting, prayers. Rationing, which adds to poverty. Furthermore, a ferocious winter is predicted… After the circular ordering the arrest of the Jews was issued, here is the news: the bishop’s summer seminary has become a concentration camp. René is the cobbler of the village. Everyone calls him Settebello, a nickname he gave himself at an early age, after leaving three fingers on the lathe.
Today he is fifty years old. Shy, solitary, taciturn. No family. But there’s Anna, her lifelong friend, who perhaps could have been something more… René never had the courage to come out. In fact, he never had the courage to do anything. His days are always the same: home and work. Rule straight. Anna has a son, Edoardo, everyone believes he was at the front.
One day he is captured by the Wehrmacht with a handful of partisans and shot on the spot. The woman is beside herself with pain, now she has only one purpose: to continue the revolution. In fact, one evening she disappears. She leaves René a note, a few instructions. But she soon leaks yet another rumor: another group of rebels was ambushed. They locked them up there, in the bishop’s villa. Among the prisoners it seems that there is even a woman… Settebello can no longer stand by and watch him, he will discover that the Resistance can start from the bottom. Even from the sole of the shoes.
Info. Sacha Naspini. Seminar Villa. Editions E/O
4/ God wants us happy
Why read it
Etty Hillesum, who disappeared shortly before her thirtieth birthday in Auschwitz, with her diary and her letters she has left us an extraordinary testimony of the black heart of the twentieth century and has become a symbol of spiritual resistance in the face of evil.
But before turning into a symbolic figure, Elisabetta Rasy tells in this book, the intrepid Dutch Jew was a free, restless and irreverent young womantenaciously intent on discovering herself and the meaning of existence, eager for love and friendship in their changing forms, from affection and tenderness to absolute passion, and true teacher of a timeless youth in which everyone can recognize one’s emotions, strength and fragility, fear and courage.
There are books that, if they don’t change our lives, touch us deeply and they make us discover something about ourselves that we didn’t know. This was Etty Hillesum’s Diary for Rasy who, reconstructing the human and literary story, found herself investigating herself, between memories and reflections, and on the eternal themes of human life: the complicated arabesques of love, the tortuous ways of the soul, the need not to succumb to horror, the possibility of finding joy even in the most difficult moments, the desire to fully live one’s life, finally the sense of autobiographical writing, this singular investigation into one’s secrets and mysteries.
With the mastery of the great authors, Rasy intertwines Etty Hillesum’s life with that of other extraordinary young women of the same terrible historical period, from Edith Stein to Simone Weil to Micol Finzi-Contini, the heroine of Giorgio Bassani’s novel, and with the stories of beloved writers and their equally beloved characters. Up to compose a double bildungsroman, that of the unforgettable Dutch girl and her own.
Info. Elisabetta Rasy. God wants us happy. HarperCollins
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