Giorno della Memoria 2021. A Long 'Digital Day' in New York

January 27, 2021 will mark twenty years since the first commemoration of Giorno della Memoria (Holocaust Remembrance Day) in Italy. In New York, each year, the Consulate General of Italy has held the ceremony of the reading of the names of the Jews deported from Italy and the Italian territories. This year, due to the pandemic, there will not be the usual events in person but you can virtually participate many initiatives during the day organized by the Italian Consulate in New York with Centro Primo Levi, the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, the Calandra Italian American Institute at CUNY, the Italian Academy at Columbia University, and the Scuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi.

The program of this digital initiative will stard with Excellency Armando Varricchio along with other institutional greetings, including the Consul General of Italy in New York, and clips from past ceremonies and some of the programs presented over the years by the partners in this initiative: Centro Primo Levi, the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, the Calandra Italian American Institute at CUNY, the Italian Academy at Columbia University, and the Scuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi.

The program of this digital initiative will be closed by a segment dedicated to the United Nations with greetings from the Italian Permanent Representative, Ambassador Mariangela Zappia and a clip form the UN outreach program event on Primo Levi held at the UN in 2016.

On January 27, from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm the YouTube platform of the Consulate General of Italy (ItalyinNY), will broadcast a series of clips from past programs that can be viewed online in their entirety and represent a moment of reflection on what it has meant to mark this date. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD8wPmKzM-0&feature=youtu.be [2]

Program

Message of introduction from the Ambassador of Italy to the Unites States, His Excellency Armando Varricchio

Greetings from the the Commissioner Penny Abeywardena, New York City’s Commissioner for International Affairs and Daniel Nigro, FDNY Fire Commissioner

Greetings by the Consul General of Italy in New York, Francesco Genuardi

Greetings by the director of the Italian Cultural Institute Fabio Finotti

Messages from Consuls Generals of other countries in New York

Short film
Eight letters from Fossoli (From: Gemma Vitale Servadio, I am Counting on You, on Everyone… Eight Letters from Fossoli, CPL Editions 2014, Awen Films)

Reading
Andrea Fiano reads from the memoir of the deportation of his father, Nedo Fiano (1925-2020).

Consulate General of Italy
Film montage of the past ceremonies of the reading of the names, with the participation of the Consular Representatives of many European Nation, NYC City Officials and the spontaneous participation of regular Newyorkers.

Italian Cultural Institute
“Internee n.6” by Maria Eisenstein, 1944. A staged reading, with Katarina Vizina
“Exile and Creativity” Carlo Ginzburg in conversation with Saul Friedlander

NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò
Stefano Albertini in conversation with Natalia Indrimi
Selection of clips from past programs:
Paolo Benvenuti, Confortorio (1992)
Catherine Campbell, Jeffrey Bonna, Oro Macht Frei, (2013)
Valerio Ciriaci and Isaak J. Liptzin, Americordo (2014)
Duilio Colletti, (Lewis Gittler, Carlo Levi, Alessandro Fersen), The Earth Cries Out (1948)
The Liberation of the Concentration Camp of Ferramonti, British Army footage (1943)
Marco Bertozzi, Noa Steimatsky, The Refugees of Cinecittà (2012)
Ruggero Gabbai, The Longest Journey (2013)
Valerio Ciriaci, Isaak J. Liptzin, If Only I Were That Warrior (2015)
Primo Levi, Massimo Scaglione, Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge (1959)
Peter Stastny, Redemption Blues (2019)

Calandra Italian American Studies Institute at CUNY
Honoring War Criminals (2012) Panel discussion on the monument to Rodolfo Graziani and the memory of the massacres in Ethiopia. With Lidia Santarelli, Girma Abebe, Yemane Demissie, Andrea Fiano.

Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University
Misinformation, Media Manipulation and Antisemitism
Costanza Sciubba Caniglia and Irene V. Pasquetto, from the new Misinformation Review at the Harvard Kennedy School report on how the extreme-right and racist Italian organization Casa Pound lost its Facebook access only to regain it in court.

Short film
16 ottobre 1943 by Marina Piperno, text by Giacomo Debenedetti

Greetings by the Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations Ambassador Mariangela Zappia

The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme and Centro Primo Levi
After the Holocaust – Primo Levi and the Nexus of Science, Responsibility and Humanism. Yom HaShoah 2016
Lidia Santarelli, Nuremberg Trial Project, Harvard University, Francesco Cassata, University of Genoa, Maaza Mengiste, Writer and author, Roger Cohen, The New York Times

Multilanguage Reading from Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man
Clips from the complete reading of Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, New York Public Library, Italian Cultural Institute, Centro Primo Levi (2019)