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Salonika 1943 | February 18 | 6:30 pm
 Center for Jewish History - 15 West 16th Street, NYC Script by Ferdinando Ceriani, Gian Paolo Cavarai, Antonio Ferrari. Musical director Evelina Meghnagi. US. staging: Director: Alan Adelson, Starring Robert Zukerman, Lily Balsen, Galeet Dardashti. The performance is in English. Admission: Free - Few tickets are left! Reservation is necessary (rsvp@primolevicenter.org) "Salonika '43" recounts the last years of the culturally unique, centuries-old Jewish community of Salonika through the eyes of an Italian diplomat who, who both in spite of and taking advantage of Italy's alliance with Germany, struggles to save those he can. Stories of ordinary people are woven together with songs, legends and tales from the Jewish tradition, many containing prophetic premonitions of horrors to come.
The play moves from the gradual concentration of the 54,000 Jews of Salonika inside a ghetto, into the horrific era of their deportation by the Germans to the death camps as the Italian Consul in Salonika, Guelfo Zamboni, tried to limit the deportations through diplomatic channels. He hurriedly drew up "lists of life" of those Italian Jews in Salonika for whom he could claim exception from the deportation orders even as the first trains were leaving for Birkenau.
While exploring the dimension of individual choice through stories of rescue and survival, the play raises questions on the larger historical context in which 98% of Salonika's Jewry was annihilated: the alliance of Italy and Germany, the Italian and German aggression on Greece, and the crimes committed by the Italian and German armies as occupiers.
This program is made possible through the generous support of
Joseph M. Mattone and the Alexander Bodini Foundation.
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Salonika '43 | Readings
English
Mark Mazower, Salonika City of Ghosts, New York, 2005
Lidia Santarelli, "History versus Memory? A Discussion on Italian War Crimes in World War II" (Working papers, Italian Academy at Columbia University)
Rena Molho, "The policy of Germany against the Jews of Greece: the extermination of the Jewish community of Salonika (1941-1944)", Review of the history of the Holocaust published by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, Paris, 2006
Salonika at the United States Holocaust Museum
Lidia Santarelli, "Muted violence: Italian war crimes in occupied Greece", Journal of Modern Italian Studies, September 2004
Davide Rodogno, "Italiani brava gente? Fascist Italy's Policy Toward the Jews in the Balkans," European History Quarterly, April 1941-July 1943
Daniel Carpi (ed.), Italian Diplomatic
Documents on the History of the Holocaust in Greece (1941-1943), 1999
Italian
Grecia 1943: quei fascisti stile SS, di Enrico Arosio, L'Espresso
Davide Conti, L'Occupazione Italiana dei Balcani, Crimini di guerra e mito della "brava gente" (1940-1943)
Crimini di Guerra | Documentation site
Documentary on Mussolini's war
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The Jewish Ghetto of Rome
February 16 | 5:30 pm
The Italian Academy at Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Ave. (@118th Street)
Free and open to the public, Rsvp to www.italianacademy.columbia.edu, (click on RSVP)
Prof. Kenneth Stow (University of Haifa, Israel)
"Doing as the Romans Do" . . . But Also Staying Jewish:
The Challenge of Life in the Roman Ghetto, 1555-1870
Dr. Irina Oryshkevich (Columbia University)
Accommodating the Jews in the "New Jerusalem"
www.italianacademy.columbia.edu
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