On January 27, 1945, the troops of the Soviet Union arrived at the concentration camp in Auschwitz and released the survived prisoners. Sixty years later, in 2005, the United Nations established the “Holocaust Remembrance Day” to honour the victims of the Shoah. We have chosen five places in Lazio that have been telling the history of the Holocaust in the past eighty years.
Internment Camp in Farfa – photo Roberto Cavaliere
The Farfa Internment Camp, located in the province of Rieti, halfway between Castelnuovo di Farfa and the Benedictine Abbey, and with a capacity of 2,700 people, was officially opened in June 1943. The Interior Ministry had considered transferring there part of the inmates of the Ferramonti Camp in Cosenza, the main Italian Jewish camp. In September 1943, when the guards abandoned their posts at the news of the armistice, about one hundred Jews were left.
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During the “Holocaust Remembrance Day”, we recall all the Jewish men, women and children who were deported after the roundups in the European Ghettos and never returned. The “Museo di Piana delle Orme”, opened in their memory in Latina, displays findings from the Second World War and offers an emotional experience through the tragic deportation and internment of political prisoners and persecuted Jews.
In addition to the Synagogue, the Tempio Maggiore, hosting the Jewish Museum, the most representative place in Rome is the Ghetto District, where we come across stumbling stones commemorating the deported citizens.
Photo www.museo900shoah.it
San Donato Val di Comino has the highest deportation rate in the province of Frosinone. Here, we can visit the “Museo del Novecento e della Shoah”, where an interactive itinerary will make us relive the experience of the Second World War. The village also hosted many confined foreign prisoners.
photo www.pietredellamemoria.it
The stumbling stones in via della Verità 19 in Viterbo tell the story of a Jewish family (Angelo Di Porto, his wife Letizia Anticoli and his father-in-law Vittorio Emanuele) victim of the Shoah, who died in the concentration camps between 1944 and 1945.
Conceived by the German artist Gunter Deming, the brass sampietrini, have been placed near the houses of the Holocaust victims, with the aim of making the passers-by stumble across them and look up at the deportees’ homes. From this tragic story, a thin thread of hope, the rescue of the couple’s young son, Silvano Di Porto, who eluded capture thanks to his neighbour, Rita Orlandi, who took the child out of the Ghetto, saving his life.