Indifference is more culpable than violence itself. It is the moral apathy of those who look the other way: it happens even today towards racism and other horrors in the world. Memory is a valuable vaccine against indifference.
(Liliana Segre)

 

Bibliography (novels and essays)

 

 

– Hunting for Jews: Mussolini, Preziosi, and Fascist Anti-Semitism / Romano Canosa. – Milan: A. Mondadori, 2006.

A history of fascist antisemitism told through the experiences of one of its most iconic figures: Giovanni Preziosi. From the early years of the century, Preziosi was the leading exponent of the nationalist antisemitism that would permeate the entire post-World War I and Fascist era. The regime's relations with the Italian Jewish community and the Zionist movement were marked by alternating phases: moments of tension were followed by even long periods of rapprochement, but the propaganda of racist nationalism never ceased.

 

 

– Auschwitz: The City, the Concentration Camp / Sybille Steinbacher; translated by Umberto Gandini. – Turin: Einaudi, 2005.

Why was the Reich's largest extermination camp built in that very town, about 60 kilometers west of Krakow? Why did Rudolf Höss come to direct it? Sybille Steinbacher's book—dedicated entirely to the concentration camp where over a million people perished—answers these and other questions, sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz. The author recounts the camp's evolution, from a complex of barracks for seasonal workers in the early 20th century to a facility with crematoria and Zyklon B lethal showers. The reader is offered an account of all the elements connected to this place of death: from the macabre organization of the extermination to the trials of those responsible and the issues surrounding Holocaust denial.

 

 

– The Banality of Good: The Story of Giorgio Perlasca / Enrico Deaglio. – Milan: Feltrinelli, 2002.

A true story, reminiscent of an adventure novel: the incredible tale of Paduan businessman Giorgio Perlasca (1910-1992), who, in the winter of 1944, managed to save thousands of Jews from extermination in Budapest by posing as the Spanish consul. He had been an enthusiastic fascist and had fought in Spain as a volunteer for Franco. September 8, 1943, found him far from home, wanted by the SS. He could have saved himself, but he decided to risk his life. His diary, which forms one of the book's chapters, reveals the extraordinary feat of a lone man, aided by a small group of people, who churned out false documents, built and defended eight "safe houses," found food, and deceived German and Hungarian Nazis. A brilliant organizer and a magnificent impostor. Then came his return home and a silence that lasted nearly half a century, until his discovery, thanks to a group of women, Hungarian Jews, young girls during the war, who owe their lives to him. He was honored as a hero and a "just man" in Hungary, Israel, the United States, Spain, and finally, thanks to this book, published twenty years ago, also in Italy.

 

– The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem / Hannah Arendt; translated by Piero Bernardini. – Milan: Feltrinelli, 2013.

Otto Adolf Eichmann, captured in a Buenos Aires suburb on the evening of May 11, 1960, flown to Israel nine days later, and brought before the Jerusalem District Court on April 11, 1961, faced fifteen charges of having committed, "in complicity with others," crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under the Nazi regime, particularly during the Second World War. Hannah Arendt traveled to Jerusalem as a correspondent for the New Yorker. She attended the trial and, in articles for the newspaper, explored the moral, political, and legal issues underlying the Eichmann case. The result is a challenging book: it raises questions we never wanted to ask, and provides answers that lack the reassuring certainty of facile Manichaeism. The Evil that Eichmann embodies appears "banal" to Arendt, and therefore all the more terrible because his more or less conscious servants are nothing but petty, gray bureaucrats. The butchers of this century do not have the “greatness” of demons: they are technicians, they resemble each other and we resemble them.

 

– The Executioners Next Door: 1941: The Massacre of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne in Poland / Jan T. Gross. – Milan: A. Mondadori, 2002.

In a field near Jedwabne, a town in northeastern Poland, there is a plaque commemorating the murder of 1.600 Jews at the hands of the Gestapo and German police. Only sixty years later was it discovered that the plaque tells a partial truth. According to research based on several eyewitness accounts collected by the author, it was Mayor Marian Karolak who gathered all the Jews in the town's central square, where they were soon surrounded by armed men who began attacking them with stones and sticks. The German police merely photographed the massacre. This book opens a new chapter on the responsibility of civilians who, in many cases, proved to be zealous executors of German orders.

 

– Executioners, Victims, Spectators: The Persecution of the Jews (1933-1945) / Raul Hilberg ; translated by Davide Panzieri. – Milan : A. Mondadori, printed 2000.

The Holocaust: one of the most heinous chapters in human history comes to life in this exposé-essay through the testimonies of its protagonists, whether victims or perpetrators, revealed after years of research by the most reliable scholar on the subject.

 

 

– Dictionary of the Holocaust / edited by Walter Laqueur; Italian edition edited by Alberto Cavaglion. – Turin: G. Einaudi, 2004.

This "Dictionary" represents the culmination of research on the genocide over the past twenty years and aims to offer a comprehensive analysis of the Nazi persecution of the Jews with the utmost scientific rigor, focusing on crucial topics without neglecting specific political events, places, and individuals. The collected essays, written by specialists of various nationalities, draw on research and documentary evidence that allow for a thorough exploration of the various questions the Holocaust continues to raise. The Italian edition has further broadened the scope of the investigation by adding appendices to existing entries focused on the Italian situation and by introducing new entries useful for understanding the phenomenon in Italy.

 

– The Echo of Silence: The Shoah Told to Young People / Elisa Springer; edited by Mario Bernardi. – Milan: Marsilio, 2003.

"Remembering and commemorating the victims of Nazism and Fascism is a socially shared and often gratifying action today; ensuring that this memory inspires us to address the daily injustices perpetrated around us is, however, extremely difficult." Since the day she decided to publish her story of a Jewish victim of racial persecution, Elisa Springer has never stopped speaking to crowds of young people, men and women, to instill in them the courage to be the new "flowers" in the terrible desert of violence and oppression, the "voice" that demands justice for those many innocents who are still born only to die..

 

– Ambiguous France: 1940–1944: The Vichy Government / Michael Curtis; translated by Marco Sartori. – Milan: Corbaccio, 2004.

For half a century, the question has been whether the Vichy Republic was a victim of the Nazi regime and its crimes or a loyal ally. Michael Curtis believes that "the verdict on Vichy must be one of guilt." Based on an analysis of archival sources and historical documentation, he demonstrates that the French government adopted an anti-Semitic policy more by choice than under German pressure, and that the small German contingent present on French soil would never have succeeded in organizing the roundup and deportation of Jews to concentration camps without the help of the French police. Curtis examines the attitude of civil society, as well as the silence of the Church and intellectuals.

 

 

Germany Knew: Terror, Genocide, and Everyday Life. An Oral History / Eric A. Johnson, Karl-Heinz Reuband. – Milan: A. Mondadori, 2008.

The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust have been recounted and documented countless times, but one question has always remained unanswered: did the Germans know the terrible deeds carried out in their name? Did they know that their Jewish fellow citizens were being systematically exterminated, that the handicapped and mentally ill were being suppressed, that the regime and the man they themselves had overwhelmingly voted for were actively working to plunge the world into the depths of barbarism? Eric Johnson, together with German sociologist Karl-Heinz Reuband, conducted extensive research to answer these disturbing questions. From a detailed and extensive series of interviews with Germans, both Jews and non-Jews, who were both sympathizers and opponents of the Nazis at the time, and from all social classes and regions of Germany, a shocking oral history of Nazism emerges, in which the German people tell their stories and themselves, shedding light on everyday reality, but also on the responsibilities and complicity of many and the humanity and innocence of a few. The truth is that at least a third of Germans knew about the Holocaust in the months it was taking place, just as many were aware of the crimes committed by the Nazis at home and in the conquered lands, but that the popularity of Hitler and the Nazi Party was so strong and widespread that the totalitarian state rarely had to employ terror and repression to secure the country's loyalty.

 

IBM and the Holocaust / Edwin Black; translated by Roberta Zuppet and Sergio Mancini. – Milan: Rizzoli, 2001.

In the eyes of survivors and historians alike, one aspect of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust has always remained shrouded in obscurity: its procedure. The efficiency of the German bureaucracy has always been discussed in general terms, but the methods used to so accurately identify people of Jewish descent or to plan the deportations had never been questioned. Black's essay highlights the crucial role of an American invention, the punched card, and of the company that, since Hitler's rise to power, had provided the card technology needed to register German Jews: the International Business Machine (IBM).

 

 

Schindler's List / Thomas Keneally; translated by Marisa Castino. – Segrete: Frassinelli, c. 1985.

What did it mean to end up on Schindler's list? Who was Oskar Schindler, a young German Catholic industrialist and suitor of beautiful women? Drawing on the testimonies of those who knew him, Keneally reconstructs the extraordinary life of this ambiguous and contradictory figure. Considered by many to be a collaborator, Schindler saved Jewish men, women, and children from Nazi extermination, transferring them from concentration camps to his labor camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia, where war material was produced. Thus, by supplying weapons to the German government and paying enormous sums of money, Schindler saved thousands of people. However, the motive that drove him to undertake his personal fight against Nazism remains a mystery.

 

 

– The Nonexistent Manuscript: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion / Cesare G. De Michelis. – Venice: Marsilio, 2004.

The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"—the text containing an alleged plan for Jewish world conquest that sparked a violent anti-Semitic backlash across Europe at the beginning of the century—is apocryphal. The author demonstrates this through a philological investigation of the various versions that appeared in Russia starting in 1902, when a journalist reported it. This volume aims to demonstrate how the text was constructed, by whom, in what context, and the different versions that circulated around the world. In light of this new perspective, it reinterprets the history of what has been called the "Bible of anti-Semitism."

 

 

– The Wannsee Protocol and the < > / Mark Roseman; translated by Sergio Mancini. – Milan: Corbaccio, 2002.

In 1947, during the Nuremberg trials, a secret document was discovered regarding the conference held on January 20, 1942, between the SS and Nazi leaders, at which the "organizational" aspects of the Final Solution were discussed. In fact, the Final Solution had already been underway for at least six months, and what's more, Hitler did not attend the meeting, strongly supported by Heydrick, the head of the SS. Roseman doesn't simply reconstruct the event itself, but also delves into the paradox of an educated elite discussing the genocide while sipping cognac and smoking cigars. From this, he reconstructs the relationship between Hitler, the conspicuously absent one, the Nazi ruling class, and the Germany of that time.

 

 

The Silence of the Allies: The Moral Responsibility of the British and Americans in the Jewish Holocaust / Richard Breitman. – Milan: A. Mondadori, 2000.

From the early years of the conflict, British intelligence began intercepting radio messages from the German police and the SS, revealing the terrifying plan for the Final Solution. But this evidence was locked away, kept top secret. Why were these documents kept secret and at the center of a diplomatic battle between the British and the Americans? Would the course of history have changed if the public, the military, and the civilians involved in the Second World War had known the truth?

 

 

Switzerland, Gold, and the Dead: Hitler's Bankers / Jean Ziegler; translated by Arianna Ghilardotti. – Milan: A. Mondadori, 1998.

Fifty years after the Holocaust, new evidence has emerged confirming the involvement of Swiss banks in laundering confiscated Jewish assets and money. But Ziegler, in addition to denouncing Switzerland's alleged role as a "Nazi safe," also seeks to demonstrate that Swiss banks provided Hitler with the money he needed to purchase weapons.

 

 

 

– The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy / Susan Zuccotti ; translated by Vittoria Lo Faro. – Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2001.

Pope Pius XII has often been criticized for his silence/consent to the extermination of European Jews during World War II. In his defense, it has been argued that he was deeply involved, but for obvious reasons, his efforts were necessarily covert. This volume examines what the Pope and his assistants did to prevent the extermination of Jews in Italy. It turns out that very little was done. The work reveals the incredibly widespread anti-Jewish sentiment in Vatican and Jesuit publications, evidenced by a wealth of archival materials that expose the secret negotiations of Pius XI, Pius XII, and many others in the Vatican's highest ranks.

 

 

 

Bibliography for children (novels and essays)

 

– As Long as My Star Shines / Liliana Segre; with Daniela Palumbo; preface by Ferruccio de Bortoli. – Milan: Piemme, 2018.

The night Liliana was told she would never be able to go to school again, she didn't even know she was Jewish. Soon, the games, horse races, and gifts from her father faded into memory, and Liliana found herself first marginalized, then homeless, finally on the run and arrested. At thirteen, she was deported to Auschwitz. She departed on January 30, 1944, from platform 21 of Milan's Central Station, and was the only child on that train to return. Every evening in the camp, she searched the sky for her star. Then she repeated to herself: as long as I'm alive, you will continue to shine.

 

 

– The Book of the Shoah: Every Child Has a Name… / Sarah Kaminski, Maria Teresa Milano; illustrations by Valeria De Caterini. – Casale Monferrato (AL): Sonda, 2009.

An original collection of narrative, historical, artistic, musical, and educational material previously unpublished in Italy, sensitively and expertly reworked by the authors, specifically on the theme of the Holocaust as experienced by children. In addition to Lia Levi's previously unpublished story "On the Black Moon a Cry" and Uri Orlev's "The Submarine," the volume features the collaboration of authoritative scholars such as Marco Brunazzi, Alberto Cavaglion, Rabbi Roberto Della Rocca, Anna Foa, and Brunetto Salvarani, and is enriched by illustrations and artwork by Marc Chagall, Emanuele Luzzati, Nerone (Sergio Terzi), and Valeria De Caterini. The reconstruction, through text and images, of the experiences of "children in the Shoah" and the presentation and analysis of previously unpublished material in Italy (on the ghettos of Tódz and Terezín), as well as the recollection of events, memories, testimonies, songs, and fragments of everyday life, offer the reader a concrete glimpse of the experiences of the past, an opportunity to interpret the present, and inspiration for building the future. By affirming the universal values ​​of educating future citizens, of coexistence among "different" people, of understanding and accepting the "other," this book strikes a chord with children and young people, but also seeks to be opened by adults—parents, educators, and librarians—that is, by those who interact with young people and engage with them through the languages ​​of knowledge and affection. Recommended reading age: 10 years and up.

 

– The Shoah and Holocaust Remembrance Day / Lia Tagliacozzo; illustrations by Angelo Ruta. – San Dorligo della Valle: EL, 2017.

There's a documentary on TV featuring skinny people dressed in rags; they're talking about the Holocaust, Holocaust Remembrance Day... Giacomo and his friends want to know more. And his grandfather tells them the stories of his friends, witnesses to a moment in history that must never be forgotten. Recommended reading age: 7 years and up.

 

 

 

– Erika's Story / by Ruth Vander Zee; illustrations by Roberto Innocenti. – Milan: La Margherita, c. 2003.

From 1933 to 1945, six million Jews, my people, were exterminated. Shot, starved, gassed, burned in ovens. Not me. I was born around 1944. I don't know exactly when. I don't even know my real name. I don't know where I come from. I don't know if I had brothers or sisters. The only thing I know is that I was only a few months old when I was rescued from the Holocaust.

 

 

 

Bibliography (comics)

 

– The Photographer of Mauthausen / screenplay by Salva Rubio, art by Pedro J. Colombo, colors by Aintzane Landa. – Milan: Mondadori Comics, 2018.

What if the theft of the century had taken place… in a Nazi concentration camp? In 1941, Francisco Boix, prisoner number 5185 at the Mauthausen concentration camp, and his fellow prisoners devised a plan to expose the photographs he had taken with a camera, which revealed the crimes committed inside the camp and subsequently led to the incrimination of the highest Nazi officials. That risky plan was only the beginning of Boix's adventures in uncovering the terrible truth… a true story, based on real events.

 

– Giorgio Perlasca: An Ordinary Man / Marco Sonseri, Ennio Bufi; preface by Franco Perlasca. – Milan: ReNoir, 2011.

In the late 1980s, some Hungarian Jewish women, through the newspaper of the Jewish community of Budapest, sought news of a Spanish diplomat who, during the last winter of the Second World War, saved them from Nazi deportation.

 

 

 

– Primo Levi / screenplay: Matteo Mastragostino, drawings: Alessandro Ranghiasci. – Padua: BeccoGiallo, 2017.

Autumn. A few months after his death, Primo Levi meets with the students of Turin's Rignon elementary school, the same one he attended as a child. Thus begins a long journey of discovery, in which the writer takes the children by the hand and calmly guides them through his personal drama, attempting to explain with gentle firmness what the Holocaust was and how he managed to survive the hell of Auschwitz. Question after question, the students will open their eyes to the darkest chapter in the history of the last century, guided by the voice and gestures of one of its most authoritative witnesses.

 

 

– The Gate of Zion / Walter Chendi. – Milan: BD Editions, c. 2010.

Trieste, September 18, 1938. Benito Mussolini delivers one of his most infamous speeches, in which he decisively cracks down on racial politics. But why Trieste? The city, already the focus of so much Mussolini propaganda, is home to one of the largest and most deeply rooted Jewish communities in Italy. It is also a crucial stopping point for the many Jews who, fleeing European fascism, embark on the final leg of their journey to Palestine. Welcomed and supported until their departure, they are now an integral part of the city's fabric. After that speech by the Duce, many Jews in Trieste will feel as if their shoes have been taken off. And it is precisely barefoot that young Jacob will find himself facing the first difficulties of adulthood, on a journey of emotional formation suspended between the dream of a new promised land and the desire to remain in a homeland that no longer accepts him.

 

 

Filmography (DVD)

anita b. / a film by Roberto Faenza; screenplay by Roberto Faenza, Edith Bruck, Nelo Risi; freely adapted from Quanta stella c'è nel cielo by Edith Bruck; director of photography Arnaldo Catinari; music by Paolo Buonvino; produced by Elda Ferri; cast: Eline Powell, Robert Sheehan, Andrea Osvart. – Campi Bisenzio: Cecchi Gori home video distributor, 2014.

Anita, a young girl who survived Auschwitz, is taken in by her aunt in a village near Prague. Everyone is busy forgetting the recent deportation past, even Eli, a boy Anita falls for. She is overcome by the desire to start over, smiling at the future. Full of enthusiasm, the girl is energized by the melting pot of peoples and languages ​​that converge around Prague, until an unexpected situation forces her to make a courageous decision.

 

 

The son of Saul / a film by Laszlo Nemes ; screenplay Clara Royer & Laszlo Nemes; photography Matyas Erdely; music Laszlo Melis; producers Gábor Sipos & Gábor Rajna; Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnar, Urs Rechn. – Campi Bisenzio: Cecchi Gori Entertainment, 2016.

1944. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, prisoner Saul Ausländer is part of the special Sonderkommando unit and is forced to burn the bodies of his people. His occupation tears him apart, but he tries to carry on, intent only on surviving. One day, however, he thinks he recognizes among the corpses a boy who looks like his son. From that moment on, he has only one goal: to find a way to give that precious body a dignified burial.

 

 

A German Life: Goebbels' Secretary / directed by Christian Krönes, Olaf S. Müller, Roland Schrotthofer, …; screenplay: Florian Weigensamer; cinematography: Frank van Vught, Davor Marinkovic. – Milan: Feltrinelli, c. 2018.

Brunhilde Pomsel worked as a secretary, stenographer, and typist for Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Mrs. Pomsel's life mirrored the great historical tragedies of the twentieth century and what happened in Germany afterward. Today, many think that the dangers of war and fascism have been overcome. Brunhilde Pomsel clearly tells us that this is not the case. A German Life forces viewers to look themselves in the face and raises disturbing and timeless questions: What would we have done in her place? Would we have sacrificed our principles to advance our careers? How do we approach moral values? What does respect for humanity mean?

 

Rosenstrasse / a film by Margarethe von Trotta; screenplay by Pamela Katz; cinematography by Franz Rath; music by Loek Dikker. – Rome: 01 Distribution, 2006.

The story is based on a true event: the segregation of Jews married to Aryan Germans pending deportation (or "expulsion," as the Nazis called it). The film highlights and emphasizes the strength of women (unlike men) who, refusing to divorce, did not abandon their husbands and children. Divorce removed even the minimal protection Jews had; divorce meant a death sentence, as happened to the protagonist's mother. With their courage, after days spent waiting around the clock on Rosenstrasse, the women finally won back their husbands by direct order of Goebbels.

 

 

Schindler's List / a film by Steven Spielberg ; music by John Williams ; screenplay Steven Zaillian. – Rome : Universal pictures, 2004.

What did it mean to end up on Schindler's list? Who was Oskar Schindler, a young German Catholic industrialist and suitor of beautiful women? Drawing on the testimonies of those who knew him, Keneally reconstructs the extraordinary life of this ambiguous and contradictory figure. Considered by many to be a collaborator, Schindler saved Jewish men, women, and children from Nazi extermination, transferring them from concentration camps to his labor camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia, where war material was produced. Thus, by supplying weapons to the German government and paying enormous sums of money, Schindler saved thousands of people. However, the motive that drove him to undertake his personal fight against Nazism remains a mystery.

 

 

The man with the iron heart / a film by Cedric Jimenez; starring Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O'Connell, Jack Reynor, and Mia Wasikowska; music by Guillaume Roussel; screenplay by David Farr, Audrey Diwan, Cédric Jimenez. – Rome: Videa, 2019.

A war film that chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of Reinhard Heydrich in Nazi Germany. Heydrich, the highest-ranking Nazi officer and considered the mastermind of the "Final Solution," was assassinated by two resistance paratroopers in 1942. The two paratroopers, one Czech and the other Slovak, were personally selected by Winston Churchill and Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš.

 

 

All the books, comics, and DVDs listed (and much more on the subject) are available in our libraries. 

Sitography

 

Videography

 

 

– Eichmann Trial –

 

 

– Hitler's Hierarchs: Adolf Eichmann The Portrait of a Criminal –

 

 

 

– “The Banality of Evil” – Stefano Massini’s story –

 

 

– The Righteous Among the Nations –

 

 

– The documentary “Giorgio Perlasca – the story that teaches life” –

 

 

– Denialism, reductionism, trivialization of the Holocaust. Introduction to the film "Denied Truth" –

 

– Shoah and Holocaust denial on the Web: a challenge for historians –

 

 

– Francesco Guccini – Auschwitz –

 

 

– Carmen Consoli – One more sip –

“You who live safely
in your warm homes,
you who find returning in the evening
hot food and friendly faces:
consider if this is a man
who works in the mud
who knows no peace
who fights for a crust of bread
who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
hairless and nameless
without the strength to remember anymore
empty eyes and cold womb
like a frog in winter.
Consider that this was:
I command you these words.
Carve them in your heart
staying at home while walking along the street,
going to bed getting up;
repeat them to your children.
Or your house will fall apart,
may illness prevent you,
may your children turn away from you”
(Primo Levi)