Ancona, Remembrance Day, VII edition

Ancona, Remembrance Day, VII edition

The 25 January the Stumbling Stone Ceremony, with the participation of schools. The citizens Clara Sereni, Bruno Cagli, Alvaro Pietrucci and Lamberto Morbidelli will be remembered.

The 27 January at the Mole “The Banality of Evil”, Popsophia's musical philosophical show.

Four new stones of stumbling blocks will be placed in the city on the occasion of the seventh edition of the Day of Remembrance. The stones are added to the 23 already placed in front of the last homes of Ancona citizens deported and killed in the Nazi concentration camps or who died during imprisonment. The ceremony, in which various schools will also participate, will be held on Thursday 25 January starting from 9am in via Volturno 31, in front of Bruno Cagli's home, and will then move towards the other three identified sites. The Mayor, Daniele Silvetti, will also be present in via Volturno.

The laying of the stones, which is part of the calendar of initiatives of the Remembrance day, was promoted thanks to the coordination of the Municipality of Ancona by Anpi Ancona, Anmig Marche, the Jewish Community of Ancona and by the Marche History Institute, which followed the coordination with the German Foundation led by Gunther Demnig (the artist who invented the “Stumbling Stones” project now widespread throughout Europe). It was supported by institutions, associations and organizations in the area, scholars from Ancona and the schools that will participate, i.e. ISTVAS, Mannucci Art High School and Rinaldini High School.

The narrator of the day will be that of Attilio Bevilacqua, the historian from Ancona who followed the research dedicated to the four people who will be remembered, murdered because they were Jews (Clara Sereno and Bruno Cagli), antifascist (Alvaro Pietrucci) and IMI, i.e. Italian military internees in Germany (Lamberto Morbidelli). Based on the research carried out, the last homes of the deportees in Ancona were the following: Bruno Cagli in via Indipendenza 31, today via Volturno 31; Clara Sereno in Corso Vittorio Emanuele 42, now Corso Garibaldi 44; Alvaro Pietrucci, in Corso Carlo Alberto 68 and Lamberto Morbidelli, in via Osteria Nuova, today via Esino 90.

It is entitled The Banality of Evil and it is the new philosophical musical show created by Popsophia on the occasion of Remembrance Day and scheduled for January 27th at 21,15 pm at the Mole in Ancona. Remembering the Shoah through the story told about it by cinema, from the most famous Hollywood film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg to the counter-story of Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino, passing through the international success of Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni. And on the other hand, the philosophy that questioned that "banality of Evil" that marked the twentieth century according to Hannah Arendt's definition: Popsophia faces a new challenge, beyond commemoration to understand, with the lenses of philosophy, as the absolute evil of the Holocaust has been and is told by visual culture and the collective imagination. Is it possible to remember what cannot and must not be forgotten, without falling into reassuring or trivializing representations? A journey that descends into the depths of the human soul, between memory and oblivion with the songs that have marked our imagination about the Holocaust and which will be performed by the Factory band: from the Jewish song Gam Gam to the unmistakable theme for violin and piano of movie Schindler's List or songs “manifest” as “God is dead”.

Accompanying Lucrezia Ercoli in this intense and complex narrative is Andrea Minuz, professor of Cinema History and Screenplay Theory and Analysis at the La Sapienza University of Rome and author of essays and books dedicated to the Shoah and cinema including “The Shoah and visual culture. Cinema, memory, public space”.

Entrance is free with reservations required. The reservation will be opened on place via Eventbrite on Wednesday 24 January at 10am).