Visiting the Synagogue in Gorizia

Even though 85% of Italy's Jews survived the Holocaust, there are no longer enough Jews in Gorizia to hold religious services. As a result, the synagogue is open for only a few hours each week, and most of the building has been made into a combination community center and memorial. Outside in the courtyard is a tablet on which are written the names of the people from Gorizia who were taken away.

The photograph on the left was actually taken in the synagogue itself while the photograph on the right is of the courtyard.

I guess it's appropriate that the synagogue was open today, as the students and I discussed Italian films and watched clips of Life is Beautiful, The Truce (particularly when Primo Levi is shown trying to return to Turin from Auschwitz), and Facing Windows (a film that on the surface is more a story of illicit love than a Holocaust story--except that it also relates a tale of an elderly gay man who is remembering a love that was lost). Facing Windows is one of the few films that is brave enough to tackle the fact that so many different kinds of people were victimized during the Holocaust--Jews, gypsies, Communists and other political individuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by the public library, which has a nice little sculpture garden. The hedgehog on the right was one of the sculptures.