Milano: A collaboration agreement for the care and valorization of Stumbling Stones

Milano: A collaboration agreement for the care and valorization of Stumbling Stones.

Il City of Milano has signed a collaboration agreement with various schools in the Town Hall 2 for the care and enhancement of Stumbling Stones, brass blocks commemorating the victims of Nazi-fascist persecution. The project involves students in safeguarding these stones and spreading knowledge about the darkest period in recent history. The signing of the pact took place in front of the Wall of Indifference in the Shoah Memorial and it is the first agreement of this type in Italy. The Stumbling Stones project was born in Germany at the end of the nineties on the initiative of the artist Gunter Demnig, with the desire to "bring home" the victims of the Nazi horror, persecuted and killed for racial, political, religious reasons, and the aim of counteracting denialism and oblivion. Today, a true open-air museum, it has over 90.000 stones laid throughout Europe, tells of the extermination of millions of people, lives torn and broken, through a simple gesture like that of an emotional 'stumble' in Memory.

“It is with great joy and a strong sense of responsibility that today we signed this important collaboration agreement – ​​declares the councilor for civic services with responsibility for Participation Gaia Romani -. Only a month ago, Senator Segre warned us about the risk that the horror of the Shoah could become just a line in the history books in the near future. This is why bringing children and young people ever closer to the knowledge and sense of memory becomes essential, I would say vital. Guarding and protecting what are small but priceless monuments means restoring the dignity of human beings to those who were barbarically deprived and killed of it, and reflecting on the abyss of the extermination camps and racial hatred, so that what happened cannot return never again".

“The duty of Memory – states the President of Municipality 2 Simone Locatelli – is a collective responsibility to guarantee dignity to each innocent victim, but it is also a stimulus towards the younger generations, to help them understand and not forget. This collaboration agreement, signed with schools of different types and levels of our Municipality, and thanks to which the boys and girls of our schools will be able to actively take care of the Stumbling Stones, is a way to respond to the duty to remember . I hope that other schools in our area can join the pact, which remains open to new subscriptions".

“A collaboration pact that is a virtuous and necessary alliance between students and schools, institutions and associations that share the commitment to a shared memory, to the memory of every single life sacrificed in a past that is part of our History. Each of us chooses to be an active part in a path that I trust will be able to embrace all the municipalities of the city - underlined the Deputy Mayor and Councilor for Education Anna Scavuzzo -. This is how, together, we want to face this time in which we witness episodes that we would like to never see again, and which ask us to respond with a unanimous and shared rejection of any type of violence, physical and verbal. We don't want to delegate this responsibility to you guys, but we are happy that you are willing to share it with us to bring to life the memory of those who sacrificed their lives in the past for freedom, the dignity of every person and democracy, people we don't want forget and which have made us freer and stronger today."