Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Terenzio Mamiani High School in Rome has organized an online conference in collaboration with the Society of Fiumani Studies – Historical Archive Museum of Rijeka

by Stella Defranza – 23/01/2021
Source: The Voice of the People

Many important yet painful topics were touched upon during the online conference entitled “Remembering the Shoah”, organized by the Terenzio Mamiani State High School in Rome in collaboration with the Society of Fiumani Studies and the Archives of the Historical Museum of Rijeka to remember the victims of the Holocaust. The initiative was organized with the patronage of the Lazio Region. The contact person for the Memory Project, professor Francesco Orvieto, opened this year's edition by explaining that unfortunately, due to an extraordinary situation, the meeting could not be held in person, as had happened in the past. Orvieto stated that, in his teaching career, he has been guided by two important concepts: awareness and minorities.

Holocaust Remembrance Day (or Day of Remembrance), an international holiday celebrated on January 27 each year to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, was the perfect opportunity to reiterate its importance and convey it to young people.

Humanity and Jewish Identity
The most important intervention of the conference was that of Gianni Polgar, an Italian Jew born in Fiume in 1936 and resident in Rome since 1939. Polgar addressed the students directly in what was defined as a conversation and not a lecture.

“I am from Fiume and I am Jewish, these two identities coexist in me,” he began proudly. “My experience and that of my family are very similar to that of thousands of people who unfortunately did not survive to tell the tale. My grandfather was of Hungarian origin, near Lake Balaton, and as a boy he went to Trieste to work, later moving to Fiume, where a branch of his company had been opened.

When D'Annunzio arrived, my parents joined the movement and chose to become Italian. Because of the racial laws, my father could no longer practice law and moved to Rome to become the secretary of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities.

In 1939 his family joined him.
I have very few memories of Fiume – Polgar admitted with a note of pain -. I was only three years old when we left but I remember Molo Longo, the bridge over the Eneo, visits to my grandmother, ice cream and a shark that my father took me to see. Even if my memories are few and blurred, Fiume is important as a historical memory of my family”.

Polgar also recounted the experience of the first years spent in Rome, the persecution of the Jews after September 8, the episode of the Gold of Rome and the period spent hiding in college under a false name.

The guilt of having survived
"When I speak of abuses and persecutions I use the term Germans and not Nazis. I am against the concept of collective responsibility of the people, but I believe that what happened in Germany is something that can be defined as a sum of individual responsibilities because too many individuals participated in it - he explained -. When my mother came to visit me in boarding school I had to pretend not to know her and call her aunt. I still carry these wounds inside me at the age of 85 and they continue to hurt.

With the arrival of the Allies in Rome, we went out, and Dad told us that we could go back to being the same as before. In Fiume, only Dad's grandmother and brothers remained. In February 1944, everyone except the bachelor uncle was loaded onto the truck, deported and killed, just like their relatives in Hungary. Only one aunt survived, who then came to Rome and started a new life, only to end it like Primo Levi did.
In my opinion it is because they did not have the strength to bear the weight of the guilt of being alive. Only he who has seen what they have experienced can understand”.

In closing his speech, Polgar addressed the students with a very simple and direct message. “The concept of different does not exist,” he stated with conviction. “Young people of Asian or African origin are the same as us, the racial concept must be completely rejected. The new generations must continue to study and read, because what happened does not mean it cannot happen again.”

“I am not optimistic,” he concluded harshly. “There is a core of bestiality in the human soul that only culture can keep in check.”

Divided memories
The president of the Society of Fiume Studies, Giovanni Stelli, also addressed the boys, albeit briefly due to technical problems, and the director Marino Micich, who spoke about the double persecution suffered by the Jews of Fiume, 400 of whom were killed in the extermination camps.
Historian Umberto Gentiloni reiterated the importance of divided memories in understanding European history, which must be respected and valued in a common history.

“The border can be considered an observation point to understand the issue of integration as a contact of different paths – Gentiloni pointed out – but it can also become a battleground and a conflict.

The only possible response to the logic of the strongest is a space of integration, coexistence and closeness, a common Europe in which divided memories can be integrated. The third key word is awareness and this is what we want to convey to the kids also thanks to the Day of Remembrance. Awareness must be based on knowledge as a fight against ignorance (a precondition for violence and disrespect)”.

Emiliano Loria, professor at the University “La Sapienza” in Rome, spoke briefly about the Jewry of Fiume and the research he has carried out during his career. Loria focused on the Jewish community of Fiume and the stories of the most influential families, as well as the difficulty of collecting material and testimonies, both in the form of writings and videos.

Loria concluded by explaining that we are about to enter the post-witness era, as we have a great availability of sources, but the sense of denial in the face of all this is increasingly alarming. The conference ended with an interesting debate born from the numerous questions of the students.