January
29th the town council of Bagno a Ripoli (FI) presented a plaque in
memory of the political dissidents and Jews confined in Villa La Selva.
From 1940 to 1944 this neoclassical villa at the top of a hill on Via
del Carota was used as a concentration camp for civilian prisoners and
as a way-station for many destined for the extermination camps.
For
Luciano Bartolino, mayor of Bagno a Ripoli, the plaque represents the
zenith of the work of the city’s Peace Commission, involved in
reassembling the memory of the local sites associated with the Shoah.
At the ceremony, he introduced Matilda Jones, a journalist from
Viterbo, whose father was a prisoner of the Villa La Selva camp.
Current president of the Bagno a Ripoli section of A.N.P.I. (National
Association of Italian Partisans) Luigi Remschi, recalled when, as a
young man, he listened to the testimony of those who had lived through
the events we were commemorating. He emphasized that the responsibility
to pass the memory to the next generation falls on each of us. Daniel
Vogelman, of the publishing house La Giuntina, talked of his father, a
Shoah survivor also detained at Villa La Selva before being transported
to Auschwitz. Then, Shir Hadash member Giovanni Cipani, who has been
instrumental in the promotion of Bagno a Ripoli’s Holocaust Memorial
Day projects, read a prayer sent for the occasion by Rabbi Robert
Rothman:
Creation
did not end with man, it began with him. When God created man, God gave
him a secret...and that secret was not how to begin but how to begin
again. ...To begin is God's privilege alone but man begins again every
time he chooses to defy death and side with the living. Remembering
those who needlessly died and trying to live meaningfully is our way of
partnering with God in preserving and enhancing life itself.
We recall with loving reverence all of those who perished
through
the cruelty of oppressors. They lie at rest in nameless graves in far
off lands, forests and lonely fields. Yet they shall not be forgotten.
Through this shared hour we take them into our hearts and give them a
place beside the cherished memories of our own beloved deceased. They
are now ours.
A
laurel wreath was placed against the pedestal of the plaque. The
inscription reads:
AT VILLA LA SELVA FROM 1940 TO
1944 JEWS AND OPPONENTS OF THE FASCIST REGIME WERE IMPRISONED FROM HERE MANY DEPARTED FOR EXTERMINATION CAMPS.
“CONSIDER THAT THIS OCCURRED... IT TOOK PLACE AND THEREFORE IT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN.” PRIMO LEVI
“IF THIS IS A MAN”
January
29th the town council of Bagno a Ripoli (FI) presented a plaque in
memory of the political dissidents and Jews confined in Villa La Selva.
From 1940 to 1944 this neoclassical villa at the top of a hill on Via
del Carota was used as a concentration camp for civilian prisoners and
as a way-station for many destined for the extermination camps.