The incredibly welcoming community of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Maryland, made me remember why I wanted to finish Days of Memory.
I am reluctant to give a history lesson in these situations, but the Italian story is relatively unknown to Americans, even those who read about and know about the Holocaust.
Most people don’t know, for example, that the King asked Mussolini to form a government, after the famous March on Rome, which was mobilization of Fascists to threaten violence in the capitol city.
Or that the dictatorship came a few years later, that those who were attracted to Fascism were not necessarily those we might suspect. It was an anti-Socialist movement that promised order and a return to glory, the Roman Empire’s glory. I tried to get through the history part of the talk, including the Racial Laws, the war, and the German occupation, and it was a necessary part of the talk.
But it is the stories of the people I met, those who lived through Fascism and the Holocaust, and historians who work so hard to document their stories, I wanted to talk about. They were generous and talked with me because they hoped their stories might keep the same sort of thing from happening again.
Above, a photo of Jack Markowicz and me, during the Q & A.
Below, a lighter moment in the Q & A.
And on the screen in our background is the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center (CDEC) in Milan, during the inaugural events for the new Shoah Memorial, where CDEC is now housed.
Photos by Dalton Delan
