On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), a special commemoration ceremony will include a theatrical reading of selected excerpts from the memoirs of three Italian women who survived imprisonment in the concentration camps. Selected readings performed by Kathy Barnes, Anne Leyden andDina Morrone, with a musical accompaniment by pianist Peter Walsh.
In Italian and English. A translation will be available for the parts in Italian.
THERE IS A PLACE ON EARTH (C’è un punto della terra…) by Giuliana Tedeschi, 1992
The author recounts her experiences in the Nazi concentration camp of Birkenau, in April of 1944, combining a discussion of the camp’s destruction of the feminine personality with images that reaffirm her humanity in the face of abomination.
SMOKE OVER BIRKENAU (Il fumo di Birkenau) Short stories by Liana Millu, 1947
A collection of six stories, each centered on a different woman, imprisoned at Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, a vast complex of barracks, gas chambers, and crematoriums about two miles from the older, smaller camp called Auschwitz I, near Kraków, Poland.
Born in Hungary, Edith Bruck settled in Rome in 1954 and is today the most prolific writer of Holocaust narrative in Italian. The book is composed in two parts. “Lettera alla madre”―an imaginary dialogue between Bruck and her mother, who died in Auschwitz― and “Tracce,” a story of a journey without return. Bruck’s experimental fusion of memoir and fiction portrays the Holocaust from a female perspective and highlights the role of gender in the creation of memory.
Thursday, January 25 | 6:00 pm
📍 ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE LOS ANGELES
1023 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90024