Holocaust in Venice – January 27th The International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

Today it is January 27th, the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. 

I want to remember  one of the 246 people deported to the concentration camps. Gino Aboaf, Achille Aboaf and Rosa Lucia Mogno’s sonwas arrested  in Venice and deported  to Auschwitz extermination camp. He survived the Shoah (Holocaust). Just 8 Venetian people survived.  

In Ghetto Novissimo (the newest part of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice) you can see Achille and Gino’s Stolpersteine (stumbling stone), under 10 sq cm, it might be easy to miss: a small brass stone, embedded directly underfoot, in the cobblestones of the street remembering where the people they commemorate once lived.

The stumbling stone movement has had a profound impact remembering the Holocaust since it was started by German artist Gunter Demnig in Cologne, Germany, in 1992. Today in Venice we have 105 stumbling stones.67 in Cannaregio; 19 in San Marco; 10 in Castello, 2 in San Polo, 1 in Dorsoduro, 1 in Santa Croce, 4 at the Lido; 1 in San Servolo.

“They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains” Primo Levi, If this is a Man

The Jewish Ghetto of Venice tour and the magnificent Cannaregio