Europe and the United Nations commemorate the victims of the Shoah each winter on the date of Auschwitz’s liberation in 1945: January 27. This is the occasion for the Italian Academy’s annual commemoration—a symposium in our theatre, or the publication of fresh materials—designed to share new knowledge about the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews.
The remembrance series has traced the pseudo-science behind Italy’s Racial Laws and looked at the experience of Jews in the U.S. during the Fascist era. It has brought the voices of concentration camp survivors and their closest family. It has addressed the fate of the Roman Ghetto and of detention sites in Italy. Over the years, the focus has broadened to also detail the persecution of the disabled, women, children, homosexuals, and the Roma and Sinti peoples, and to tell how art was looted and music was made under Mussolini and Hitler. The series has brought experts on past and current aggression, discrimination, disinformation, and hate speech, and (with optimism) on the efforts to foster Jewish life in Europe today.
The series was conceived by Barbara Faedda in 2008 and has been organized by her annually since then. Videos of many of the symposia can be found here below; talks from the early years of the series are gathered in the Academy’s 2016 book, Present and Future Memory: Holocaust Studies at the Italian Academy, 2008–2016.
(Talks marked with an * appear in the Academy's 2016 book, Present and Future Memory: Holocaust Studies at the Italian Academy, 2008–2016)
2008 Law and Science in the Service of Racism: the “Leggi Razziali”
Speakers:
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
New York University
The Italian Racial Laws: Pretexts, Subtexts, Aftermaths
Lidia Santarelli
New York University
The Righteous Enemy?
Fascist Italy and the Jews in Axis-Occupied Europe
Alexander Stille
Columbia University
The Holocaust and the Case of Italy
2009 Antisemitism at Home and Abroad
Speakers:
Ira Katznelson
Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University
The Liberal Alternative: Jews in the United States during the Decades of Italian Fascism *
Claudio Lomnitz [originally scheduled]
Director, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity; Professor, Anthropology Department, Columbia University
Dreyfus in Latin America: Anti-Semitism and the Ideology of the Mexican Revolution
2010 Rome’s Jewish Ghetto
Speakers:
Kenneth Stow
Professor of Jewish History Emeritus, University of Haifa
“Doing as the Romans Do” . . . But Also Staying Jewish.
The Challenge of Life in the Roman Ghetto, 1555–1870 *
Irina Oryshkevich
Society of Fellows, Columbia University
Accommodating the Jews in the “New Jerusalem” *
2011 “Racially Inferior”: Roma, Sinti, and Other Holocaust Victims
Speakers:
Krista Hegburg
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
“Unknown Holocaust”: Roma and Sinti in Hitler’s Europe
Robert Kushen
Executive Director, European Roma Rights Centre
Roma in Today’s Europe: Contemporary Patterns of Prejudice and Discrimination *
2012 “Unnatural Indecency”: Sexuality and Homosexuality during Nazism and Fascism
Speakers:
Ted Phillips
Director, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933–1945 *
Elizabeth Leake
Department of Italian, Columbia University
Fascism and Sexuality in Italian Literature and Film
2013 “The Unfit”: Disability under Nazism and Fascism
Speakers:
Patricia Heberer Rice
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Giving a Face to Faceless Victims: Profiles of Disabled Victims of the Nazi “Euthanasia” Program *
Susan Bachrach
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race *
David Forgacs
New York University
Photographing Places of Social Exclusion
2014 Gender and Antisemitism: Women’s Rights Yesterday and Today
Speakers:
Victoria de Grazia
Columbia University
Fascist Men and Jewish Women
Yasmine Ergas
Columbia University
Women’s Rights and Women’s Freedoms: A View from the Present *
Elissa Bemporad
Queens College of the City University of New York
Female Voices of the Holocaust
2015 Music, Fascism, and the Holocaust
Speakers:
Michael Beckerman
New York University
Moravia and the Wild Goose: Terezin, Summer 1944
Harvey Sachs
Curtis Institute of Music
Jewish and Anti-Fascist Musicians in Mussolini’s Italy *
2016 To Be a Child during the Holocaust
Speakers:
Patricia Heberer Rice
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In Their Own Words: The World of the Child during the Holocaust *
Emily Langer
The Washington Post
“We Are Very Lucky”: Two Young Italian Sisters Who Survived Auschwitz
2017 Looted Art, Nazism, and Fascism
Speakers:
Monica Dugot
Senior Vice President/International Director of Restitution, Christie's;
formerly Deputy Director, Holocaust Claims Processing Office, NY State Banking Department
Jasmin Hartmann
Department for Provenance Research, City of Düsseldorf
"Non signalés par les Anglais." Provenance research on French drawings acquired in France in 1944
Ilaria Pavan
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; Italian Academy Fellow 2017
Jewish persecution and looted art in Italy: evidence and denial, 1938–2015
Moderator:
Lynn Rother
Senior Provenance Specialist, The Museum of Modern Art
2018 Spaces and Geographies of Concentration Camps: How to Preserve the Memory of Discrimination
Speakers:
Lisa Ackerman
Executive Vice President, World Monuments Fund
Remembering a Difficult Past
Alberto Giordano
Chair, Geography Dept., Texas State University
From the National to the Individual: Narratives of the Holocaust in Italy
2019 Antisemitism, Hate Speech, and Social Media
Speakers:
Susan McGregor
Assistant Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism; Assistant Professor, Columbia Journalism School
Memes, Misinformation, and Antisemitism: Coded Communications on Social Media
Michel Rosenfeld
University Professor of Law and Comparative Democracy & Justice; Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University
Reassessing Antisemitism in an Age of Online Hate
2020 Misinformation, Media Manipulation, and Antisemitism
Speakers:
Ioana Literat
Assistant Professor of Communication, Media and Learning Technologies Design, Teachers College, Columbia University
“Youth political expression in online spaces”
Rachel Deblinger (via Skype)
Director of the Modern Endangered Archives Program at the UCLA Library;
Co-Director of the Digital Jewish Studies Initiative at UC Santa Cruz
“Remix, remember, retweet: meditations on Holocaust memory, social media, and antisemitism online”
Irene V. Pasquetto
Chief Editor, “HKS Misinformation Review,” Harvard Kennedy School
Costanza Sciubba Caniglia
Managing Editor, “HKS Misinformation Review,” Harvard Kennedy School
“De-platforming Neo-Nazis in Italy: impacts and unexpected consequences”
Alex Abdo
Litigation Director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
“Free speech in black boxes”
2021 Liliana Segre on Auschwitz and What It Means Today
Interview with Barbara Faedda
2022 Emanuele Fiano on Activism against Oblivion
Interview with Barbara Faedda
2023 Katharina von Schnurbein on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life
Interview with Barbara Faedda
2024 Miguel Gotor on Rome’s Jewish culture and history
Interview with Barbara Faedda