ABOUT CDEC  

The recent launch of the online magazine Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History is a quietly important event. It will provide the English language public with direct access to research projects of CDEC.

 

Founded in Milan in 1955 on the ten-year anniversary of the liberation of Italy from the Nazis and the fall of the Fascist Social Republic, CDEC has become the foremost Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center in Italy. By virtue of its special commitment to documenting, researching and preserving the memory of the Shoah, the CDEC Foundation came to be regarded as the "place of memory" for the thousands of Italian Jews who were deported and murdered.

 

 

 

 

BUY BOOKS
Buy hard to find/out of print books about Italian Judaism and support CEDEC.
 
The CDEC Foundation's library has a number of surplus books that will be available for exchanges or offered for a donation. There are currently 2343 books available on Jewish history and culture.

Consult the complete list of CDEC's surplus books

THANKS
Centro Primo Levi thanks its readers, audience and contributors as well as its main supporters: the Cahnman Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation, Peter S. Kalikow and Dr. Claude Ghez. The new logo of CPL is designed by Jonathan Wajskol.

JANUARY 23 SAUL STEINBERG IN ITALY
January 23 at 6 pm | Center for Jewish History | 15 West 16 Street
Free admission | Reservations: [email protected] | Read

Mario Tedeschini Lalli 

For most of his adult life, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) drew maps-maps of real or imaginary locations, maps of words and of concepts. Often the maps are of actual places refracted through the artist's mental constructs, as in View of the World from 9th Avenue, his famous March 29, 1976 New Yorker cover, which, reprinted as a poster, copied, and appropriated for many other cities of the world, became his personal nightmare; even today, it remains the icon that most easily identifies him. There is, however, another splendid map, completed ten years earlier; although intended for The New Yorker, it was never fully published in Steinberg's lifetime. Entitled Autogeography, it is a bird's-eye view of a green territory dotted with the names of many locales, large and small, from every corner of the world. A very blue, winding river flows through the territory, and on the bottom right it skirts a small lake with an island. On the island is the word "Milano," while on the shore northeast of the island we find a locality named "Tortoreto (Teramo)."

Young Steinberg lived for more than seven years in Milan (1933-41), arriving from his native Bucharest to enroll in architecture school. In Milan, he studied, loved, began to draw and publish, and formed enduring friendships. By mid-1938, however, the institution of the Fascist racial laws made his Italian sojourn perilous, and he began to seek safe haven elsewhere. In late April 1941, he was arrested as a Romanian Jew and sent to an internment camp in the small Abruzzi town of Tortoreto in the province of Teramo. The experience would continue to haunt him and to punctuate his correspondence. But never-at least not during his lifetime-did it translate into a coherent and conscious narrative. Steinberg feared "autobiography-the last refuge of the scoundrel."  Read
QUEST CDEC'S NEW JOURNAL

Alessandro Cassin interviews the historian Michele Sarfatti, director of CDEC (Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea), the authority and point of reference on contemporary Italian Jewish history. 

 

A.C. Quest is CDEC's first magazine; had you considered producing one before? 

 

M.S. Over the years the idea of a magazine has come up often, but nothing came of it. We were lacking two things:  sufficient funding and the right person to lead it. I am convinced that in order to be successful any magazine needs - besides an editor in chief and a strong editorial board - a person who becomes the heart of the project. In this case we have found her in Laura Brazzo.  

 

A.C. How did the idea of Quest take shape? 

 

M.S. Some of our younger researchers came up with the idea and presented it to us. Quest was born after about a year of heated discussions. . 

 

A.C. Who is the intended target? 

 

M.S. The magazine is aimed at scholars in the broadest sense. It is meant to stimulate and promote debate among researchers, academics as well as the general public. Its creators are young, (but in Italy one is perceived as young into their forties!) whose point of reference is the academic world. 

 

A.C. You mentioned that Quest represents both a challenge and act of defiance... 

 

M.S. Quest is a leap of faith for several reasons.  

In Italy there are relatively few online only magazines. Our choice was dictated both by its lower cost and by our conviction that the future is digital. We have extended our historical timeframe. While CDEC normally concentrates on the 19th and 20th Centuries, Quest's scope of inquiry goes back to the 18th Century.We opted for a publication in English in a country where even in the scientific community it is not yet as widely used. Read 

ACCESS CDEC'S PROJECTS

CDEC provides the academic community and the public at large with invaluable study resources, curricula, teaching tools, a library, a videoteque, a vast archive, exhibitions and many important research projects.   

 

CDEC's is about to launch a web site, I nomi della Shoah italiana which will serve as a online memorial to the of Jews deported from Italy and the territories under Italian control, 1943-1945. Based on comprehensive research began in 1979 under the direction of Liliana Picciotto, the site features a search engine that gives access to a database that will include the names of over 7000 individuals, the majority of whom deported from Italy to Auschwitz- Birkenau and those of 2000 individuals deported from Italian territories. The website, www.nomidellashoah.it, will be up and running by January 27th, 2012 and is scheduled to be fully completed by January 27, 2013.

 

Among CDEC's most recent projects, is the online database of the "non-Italian" Jews present in Italy between 1938 and 1945 and the online English language journal Quest

 

 

GIORNO DELLA MEMORIA NEW YORK

 

JANUARY 27  9:00 am to 3:00 pm  

Consulate General of Italy | Park Avenue at 69th Street | INFO 

Ceremony of the reading of the names of Jews deported from Italy and the Italian territories. Reservations: [email protected]

 

JANUARY 29 at 2:30 pm
Museum of Jewish Heritage | 36 Battery Park Place  |  Free admission
FORGING THE "NEW MAN". ITALIAN EUGENICS IN PERSPECTIVE
 
JANUARY 30 at 6:00 pm
NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marim�
24 West 12th Street  |  Free admission
THE REFUGEES OF CINECITTA'
Special screening, by Marco Bertozzi and Noa Steimatsky

FEBRUARY 2 at 5:30 pm
Italian Academy at Columbia University
Free admission | Reservations: (212) 854-2306
"UNNATURAL INDECENCY": SEXUALITY AND HOMOSEXUALITY UNDER NAZISM AND FASCISM