A Photographic Postscript of Sorts

This morning I was looking through Jay's photographs to prepare a PowerPoint presentation on Romania and found some additional images from our 2007 trip to Italy. Because that was our first trip to the Riseria di San Sabba, we wound up taking more photographs on that trip. Here are some of the more interesting.

Although the retreatring Germans bombed the crematorium, one can see in the photograph below that the architect attempted to preserve the idea of the crematorium. Not only is it possible to see its outlines, but the floor is recreated in tile, and the reflective surface provides an effective contrast with the brick walls of the original rice husking factory.

In the background are memorials to the people who died here.


Because the Riseria di San Sabbo is as much memorial as museum, it includes a kind of sculpture garden. The sculpture in the center here represents the smokestack.

Even though much of the central courtyard has been turned into a memorial space, some areas of the Riseria have been preserved as they were during World War II. Thus visitors have a sense of what it would have been like to have been in prison there.



As you can see from the vase in the lower left of the photograph, people often place flowers as tributes to the people who suffered and died here. While it's hard to see from the photograph exactly how small the cells are, the size is one of the things that bothered the students most when they imagined being held in one of these cells for months on end. The door of the cell on the right has been removed so viewers can see how small it is.

The floral tributes are more evident in the photograph on the left, which also preserves the tiny window from which prisoners could look out on the larger holding area.

The literature also indicated that the cells were very close to the area where torture and executions took place. It would have been difficult for prisoners to have remained unaware of what was happening to their fellow prisoners.

Reflections on Italy . . . and the Holocaust

Since my last week in Italy was a blur of getting ready for the banquet, grading the students' analytical papers, blogs, and finals, I didn't get around to posting my thoughts about teaching about the Holocaust while living in Italy until now, and I'm not sure that I have yet digested everything I thought about for the past six weeks.

Even though it is true that 85% of Italy's Jews survived the Holocaust, that statistic wasn't true for the border area in which Gorizia is located, and one sees that absence in the fact that the synagogue is no longer in use. One sees the death toll in the memorials to those who died.

Occasionally, I also saw contemporary evidence of the kind of prejudice that produces genocide (and not only bottles of wine with Hitler labels and Mussolini labels either). For example, Angela identified one of the cafes near the hotel as a place where elderly Fascists hang out, and one day she translated a poster for a play that had been put on in March. The title seemed to single out Jews, homosexuals, and one other group. I planned to get a photograph of the poster, but the shutters over the window were closed every time I went by after that. Did the proprietors see us staring at the poster? Were they embarrassed? or away from Gorizia?

If this group seems intent on keeping prejudice alive, others seem equally intent on remembering the Holocaust and everything that happened, so that nothing like it will ever happen again. Not only are there memorials throughout the region, but Jay and I found a CD at the Italian equivalent to the Dollar Store when we were out looking for gag gifts for the student banquet. The title is Shoah: Musica Per Non Dimenticare (or Music to Remember).

The CD, which was issued in 2008 by Azzurra Music, includes the following cuts: La vita e bella theme song; Schindler's List theme song; "Eli Eli," identified as an Israeli folk song; "Yerushalaim Shel Zaav" (also identified as an Israeli folk song); the theme song from Il postino (The Postman; "Shalom Alejem"; "Yedid Nefesh"; "Barcarolle" (from La vita e Bella); "Sher"; "Notturno/Opera 9 n. 2" from Il Pianista; "Remembrances" (from Schindler's List); "Erev Shel Shoshanim" (an Israeli folk song); and "Buongiorno Principessa" (from La vita e bella).

I suspect that most cultures incorporate these extreme differences (one only needs to read a newspaper or watch the news), but teaching a class on the Holocaust this summer made me especially aware of what CAN happen. I suppose that all right thinking people wonder exactly how to nourish positive responses and make sure that hate is eliminated before it takes hold. Certainly my students were consistently horrified and kept asking, "How could this happen?" "Why didn't people do more?" To which I occasionally retorted, "What are you doing about climate change today?" "The treatment of people in the developing world?"

Closing Out the Intellectual Part of the Odyssey

Even though Jay and I are physically back in Atlanta, I still need to finish grading the final blogs that the students wrote. All did well on the final exam and occasionally surprised me by commenting on how moved they were by the experience of reading about the Holocaust and viewing so many Holocaust films.

Indeed, many expressed the feeling of being "blown away" by the experience of watching one of the very earliest of Holocaust documentaries. Set at the abandoned camps of Auschwitz and Majdenek, the film includes excerpts from contemporary Soviet, Polish, and French newsreels as well as footage shot at the internment camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands, or by the Allies' "clean-up" operations.

The title is extremely rich in allusions. On December 7, 1941, Hitler signed a directive that declared anyone guilty of endangering the "security or state of readiness" of German forces and who was not to be summarily executed simply vanished into the "night and fog" of Germany. Prior to the "Night and Fog" decree, political prisoners were treated according to international law, which Hitler felt was too lenient.

However, Hitler's code name is a reference to Goethe, Germany's most acclaimed poet and playwright, who used the phrase to describe clandestine actions often concealed by fog and the darkness of night.

One of Resnais' collaborators, the poet and novelist Jean Cayrol, who had been imprisoned at Mauthausen as a result of his work with the Resistance had written about his experience in Poèmes de la nuit et brouillard.

Adding Photographs to Older Posts

Since we were having problems with the internet in Italy, I wasn't always able to post photographs to earlier blogs. I've tried to correct that problem. If you go back, you can see the illustrated version.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggedy Jig

Note that I didn't call it the end of The Odyssey, for I plan to post more adventures as they come up. Just don't expect them to occur as regularly as they did when we were traveling around Italy.

The trip home WAS something of an ordeal, as Jay and I got on a charter bus to take seven of the students (AND my colleague Herr Professor Doctor Michael Nitsche) to Marco Polo (the Venice Airport) for our trip home. Even though our flight wasn't supposed to leave until noon, we had to leave the hotel at 5:30 AM because two students had 10 AM tickets. Once we got to the airport there was some drama because of a threatened strike, but all flights took off more or less according to schedule.

After hanging out in the airport for several hours with three students (one of whom had the same flight as us) and drinking our last cups of good Italian coffee, we got on the plane and had a totally uneventful flight into JFK. In fact, the only (small) drama was that the captain hit the tarmac just a bit too fast.

We knew we had a three-hour layover at JFK, which included the thrill of going through customs. Far less drama than the last time we returned from Italy and Romania when the TSA staff was totally rude and surly and told us that we had to throw away the bottle of Lemoncello we had purchased for Andy. (We didn't, but THAT's another story) At least this time they let people know right from the beginning that they had to check any wine they had purchased at the Venice Airport rather than wait until their luggage had already gone to the plane.

Because of thunderstorms in Atlanta, the three-hour layover turned into a five-hour layover. As a result, we arrived home at 1:30 AM, or 24 hours after leaving Italy.

A Voyage into the Veneto

Just to let everyone know that we weren't abducted by aliens. Nor did Jay crash our car into an Italian ravine. On the other hand, Internet access even at the hotel was a bit iffy for the better part of a week, at the little country inn where we spent the weekend almost impossible.

Then, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Jay and I took off by car to visit some smaller cities that are difficult or impossible to reach by train. Given some recommendations by my colleague, Angela Dalle Vacche who grew up in Venice, we took off on Friday morning, with plans to visit Asolo, Brassano del Grappa, and Treviso. Furthermore, the concierge at the hotel where the program is based gave us a recommendation for a charming farmhouse that had been converted into a small inn. Not only do the owners have vineyards and an organic vegetable garden, but they make their own very good red wine.

Here's the outside.

The family lives in the right side of the house while the six bedrooms in the inn are in the former stable and hayloft. Dedicated to authentic detail, the young woman owner and her parents had sought out original doors and furniture as well as wonderful embroidered linens. Just about everything worked but the Internet. And given the surroundings, who really cared about the Internet?

Here's the dining room.

You can see above some of the attention to detail. In addition, the owners prepared a delightful breakfast both mornings: home made bread and preserves, wonderful coffee, and yogurt. On the first morning, we were able to eat outside on the patio. Unfortunately, on the second, it was raining cats and dogs. At least we were able to enjoy the beautiful atmosphere.

Although we managed to do all that had been recommended, we discovered some other activities, primarily automotive and went on to Asiago (from which the cheese originated). It was an extremely pleasant visit--even though rain on Saturday afternoon and much of Sunday did manage to dampen some of our enthusiasm.

Asolo is a charming little city in the mountains, and the lovely mural below appears on the facade of the cathedral there.

In addition to the beautiful church, we wandered through the cobblestone streets and discovered another of the winged lions, which colleague Bob Wood had trained me to look for.










From Asolo we drove to Brassano del Grappa, where we had a delightful pizza luncheon at an little outdoor cafe--as you can see from my very pleased face at the opening of today's blog.

After our lunch, we visited a grappa museum and learned about how the development of grappa originated in alchemy. The final step at the museum was to taste various types of grappa, and we finally purchased a small bottle of the traditional version.

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Here's a picture of an earlier grappa still.







On the way back to Gorizia, we stopped by the city of Treviso, where Benneton is headquartered. Another charming city on canals complete with ducks and a working waterwheel. However, discouraged by the steady rain, we cut our visit short and hopped in the car to return to Gorizia. On our way back, we hoped to find another delightful little cafe, but it was a Sunday afternoon, and in Italy--unlike the United States where one can dine 24 hours a day--it's difficult to find anything open. So, thought I'm ashamed to admit it...

Risiera di San Sabba and Holland Film, Europa, Europa

Yesterday, Angela, Jay and I took the students on a field trip to one of Italy's few concentration camps, the location we visited three years ago and that provided the inspiration for the course I'm teaching on the Holocaust in European film.

I can't actually remember who recommended that we visit the site, but the four of us (Jay and I along with Shannon and Stephen Dobranski) were all moved by the experience. Not only is the site a very informative museum of the times, but it is also a compelling memorial to the people who were kept there.

Since I ran off without a camera, you will once again need to go to the Internet for visual information. For some historical background, go to Risiera di San Sabba and Holocaust Education .

Nothing really does justice, however, to the fact that the site has been turned into a memorial, which one enters through this narrow and looming portal through which one can see the original rice husking factory. The addition is the result of a design competition that turned the original factory into a memorial space and gallery for a remarkable collection of art works, including the sculpture on the upper left and drawings by an artist from Gorizia, Zoran Music, a Slovene painter who was sent to Dachau and which he documented in a series of haunting paintings. Go to Music to read about him. Then Google Zoran Music to look at his art.

The one thing that doesn't appear clearly in any of the photos is that the present space simply provides an outline of where the crematorium had been. The Nazis had bombed it to eliminate all traces of what had happened there, but the architect, Romano Boico, chose not to rebuild it but to present it as absence.

The others aspects of the space that interested the students was an excellent documentary film (in English) of what had taken place between 1913 and 1975. Obviously the buildings were used as a rice husking factory between 1913 and the 1940s, were turned into a holding area and forced labor camp during the 1940s, became a public monument in 1966, and finally opened as a museum in 1975.

We returned to Gorizia, where we watched Holland's Europa, Europa which elicited probably the best discussion we've had yet, probably because the film is, despite some pretty harrowing moments, a comedy based on a real person's experience. Solomon Perel, whom we see at the end of the film, was a Jew who escaped persecution by hiding in plain sight, first in a Soviet orphanage and ultimately in a school for Hitler Youth. I'm definitely not doing it justice (but no summary would do justice to its episodic or to the twists and turns by which Solly manages to save both his life and his identity).