Contested Memories in the Border Town of Trieste: A Comparative Analysis of the Risiera di San Sabba and The Foiba di Basovizza (original) (raw)
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Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2008
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Eastern European Holocaust Studies, 2024
In recent years, Italy has seen a proliferation of Holocaust Museums and Memorials. This article focuses on two recent additions: the Museum of the Twentieth Century and the Shoah in San Donato Val di Comino (Frosinone), and the Memory and Peace Museum Giovanni Palatucci Study Center in Campagna (Salerno). It uses qualitative methods including in-depth interviews, direct observation, analysis of information panels, other audio and visual elements, and is guided by a theoretical framework rooted in theories of nationalism. The research findings show that these museums present an overly positive narrative of Italy's role in the Holocaust lacking critical examination and perpetuating the myth of the "good Italian" already identified by other scholars. The museums emphasize favourable conditions for Jewish internees without considering factual evidence that could have provided a more balanced perspective. Additionally, they fail to acknowledge Italian collaboration with Nazi Germany, both, at the exhibition sites and elsewhere. Both museums highlight a Christian salvific narrative, stressing the role of Christian Italians saving Jews, and perpetuating stereotypes of Jews as passive victims. Additionally, Jews are excluded from the notion of "Italianness" and portrayed as "others." Also, fascism is excluded, deemed incompatible with the idealized Italian Christian civilization proposed by the museums.
Eastern European Holocaust studies, 2024
In recent years, Italy has seen a proliferation of Holocaust Museums and Memorials. This article focuses on two recent additions: the Museum of the Twentieth Century and the Shoah in San Donato Val di Comino (Frosinone), and the Memory and Peace Museum Giovanni Palatucci Study Center in Campagna (Salerno). It uses qualitative methods including in-depth interviews, direct observation, analysis of information panels, other audio and visual elements, and is guided by a theoretical framework rooted in theories of nationalism. The research findings show that these museums present an overly positive narrative of Italy's role in the Holocaust lacking critical examination and perpetuating the myth of the "good Italian" already identified by other scholars. The museums emphasize favourable conditions for Jewish internees without considering factual evidence that could have provided a more balanced perspective. Additionally, they fail to acknowledge Italian collaboration with Nazi Germany, both, at the exhibition sites and elsewhere. Both museums highlight a Christian salvific narrative, stressing the role of Christian Italians saving Jews, and perpetuating stereotypes of Jews as passive victims. Additionally, Jews are excluded from the notion of "Italianness" and portrayed as "others." Also, fascism is excluded, deemed incompatible with the idealized Italian Christian civilization proposed by the museums.
Eastern European Holocaust Studies, 2024
In Italy, after the victory of Giorgia Meloni's post-fascist party, "Fratelli d'Italia," several studies began to discuss whether or not the country has come to terms with the memory of fascism, its role as an inspirer of Nazism, and the collaboration with Nazi Germany in the Holocaust. Especially the latter, scholarly literature pointed out, has failed to receive the attention it deserves. This article argues that this is particularly true with regard to public history, the way historical information and events are interpreted and presented to the general public, and focuses on public museums exhibiting the Holocaust and resistance. Evidence for this article comes from two in-depth case studies regarding the oldest yet unaltered Liberation Museum in Rome and the Museum-Monument to Racial and Political Deportees in the Nazi Lagers in Carpi. The article contends that within these museums, the narration of resistance prevails, whilst evidence of Italy's past collaborationism remains hidden and unexhibited. In essence, these museums emphasise national heroism and sidestep Italian accountability in the Holocaust.
Modern Italy
This article consists of interviews with five world experts on the memory of Fascism. Taking the centenary of the March on Rome as an opportunity to rethink the development of Italian collective memory, the five interviewees were asked to reflect on different aspects of the Italian memory of Fascism, addressing the dominant conceptualisations, limits, and transformations of the discourses used to narrate Fascism in Italian culture. The result of these conversations, which touch upon issues related to the memory of the Resistance, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and colonialism, is a rich overview of the main trends and current trajectories of Italian memory culture, which can help us imagine the future directions of the Italian memory of Fascism and enhance interventions in this field by memory scholars and memory activists.
" A typically Italian Joke " - An Inquiry into the Collective Memory of Italian Fascism
Moving from an article written by the American historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat concerning the relationship between Italian people and the monumental legacy of Italy’s Fascist past, this paper aims to tackle the broader issue of Collective Memory of Italian Fascism. Namely, the memory of a rather benign form of totalitarianism which is not stained by the horrible crimes of its Nazi counterpart, and towards which the Italian population – because of its inherent goodness - never totally adhere to. To determine the way in which this image established itself, the topic is approached through the tools supplies by Memory Studies, in an attempt to identify those intellectual and cultural traditions which have framed this particular representation of the past and those active memory agents who selectively adapted and manipulated history. In particular, attention is given to the specificity of the historical period in which the process of establishing a collective memory took place, the failure of the purges against the Fascists and the lack of persecution against war criminals, which lead to a misleading evaluation of the legacy of Fascism and the war. Furthermore, active agents of memory are individuated in the work of the scholars who dealt with the history of Fascism, in the Allies and the propaganda techniques they deployed during the war, and finally in the visual media and their active role in forging specific exculpatory memories. What this paper ascertains, therefore, is how these policies of re-elaboration of the national past mainly pointed towards establishing an aura of social amnesia around Fascism, its crimes and the connivance of Italian people. This collective amnesia, however, left gaps and ‘black holes’ into the collective memory of Italians. As this paper argues, these gaps were fulfilled thanks to a constant comparison with Nazi Germany and the brutality of its crimes, thus establishing what is known as the ‘bad Germans/good Italians’ trope which is central in evaluating what has established itself to be the collective memory of Italian Fascism.