The Italian Shoah: Reception and Representation

Abstract

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, use of the term Shoah is a contentious matter.¹ Shoah or Holocaust is a cultural construction in constant evolving of its concept, both for the individual as for its community. As a testament to the challenges associated with the theoretical elaboration of this epochal event, new critical treatments and revisions and revaluations of discourse are periodically proposed. In recent Italian publications, it is not uncommon for the critic to encounter the word sovrabbon-danza (overload) in response to the proliferation of recent pronouncements of the Italian Jewish memory of the Shoah. Despite the fact that in Italian culture, the term Shoah designates un’intera vicenda storica (a whole historical event) in the same way as Rinascimento and Risorgimento recall entire periods (Sarfatti, La Shoah 6), its place in public memory is at pains with its narrative construction. Awareness of the Shoah cannot be found in many of those who attended public schools, at least before the institution of the Giornata della Memoria (Day of Memory), a day of commemoration instituted by the Italian republic on July 20, 2000, with Law 211 to honor the liberation of Italian prisoners from Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 (Meghnagi, “Introduzione” xxii). Michele Battini effectively analyzes the possible “reazioni di rigetto” (“rejection reactions”) to the Shoah as the impending “assuefazione” (“inurement”) to the Giornata della Memoria (“La Shoah” 3–13).