Holocaust Remembrance Day: Reading of the names

Ceremony of the reading of the names of the Jews deported from Italy and Italian territories.

During the ceremony brief accounts of the lives of men, women and children whom the Nazi and Fascist regimes had been labeled as “foreign Jews” or “stateless Jews” will be read. After arriving in Italy in an attempt to leave Europe, many of these individuals were deported. The stories have been collected by Anna Pizzuti in the book “Paper Lives”.

On January 27, 1945 the Soviet Army entered and liberated the extermination camp of Auschwitz. This date was chosen to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to promote the fight against racism and any kind of persecution. Following the efforts of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, an intergovernmental organization founded in Sweden in 1998, January 27 was established in Germany and France to remember the victims of Fascism and Nazism. In the year 2000 the Italian Parliament voted the resolution to observe January 27 as “Giorno della Memoria”. Progressively all countries of the European Union followed through. In 2006 the United Nations adopted the commemoration of January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This event takes place at the Consulate General of Italy, 690 Park Avenue.