Days of Memory: Listening to Jewish Italians who lived through Fascism and the Holocaust

 Days of Memory: Listening to Jewish Italians who lived through Fascism and the Holocaust
with Judith Monachina

Friday, September 13 at 10:00 a.m.

In-person at Berkshire Community College
Free & open to all

SOLD OUT!

New book about the Italian Holocaust brings readers into the homes of people who lived through it

In Days of Memory: Listening to Jewish Italians who lived through Fascism and the Holocaust, people who lived during that epoch tell us about their daily lives and survival. A reader will learn about fascism, which early on was not explicitly anti-Semitic, and its progression, which eventually resulted in a brutal dictatorship, Racial Laws, and war.  Then, the German occupation of Italy brought a deadly race between the Allies fighting their way up the peninsula and the Nazi deportation machine.  Jews had to hide, hide their identity, or flee the country.

Days of Memory tells us about a history most Americans do not know.  Even well-read Americans often do not know the Italian story.  In Days of Memory, readers learn it through individual stories of women and men who show us their courage and resilience – and their generosity. After all, they sat with this writer and told her their stories.

The Italian epoch has much to teach Americans.  As one interviewer tells us: Do not let tyranny take hold, because it takes victims, blood, and years to get rid of it. (Maria Perla Ajo, Gubbio, Italy.)

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Judith Monachina began this project as a reporter and editor at a weekly newspaper, the Advocate, in Western Massachusetts.  She was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship to study in Milan, in 2007, at the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation. While there, she began to turn her attention to keeping stories safe and designing projects to that end. She now directs the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College.