Pietre d’Inciampo - Lest We Forget

As an act of homage, I’ve been photographing all the “pietre d’inciampo” or “Stolpersteine” – the stumbling blocks or tripping stones – that have been installed around Torino in recent years to commemorate some of the people who were arrested by the Fascist government or by the Germans from 1943 to 1945, deported, and nearly all killed in concentration camps.  They are the project of Gunter Demnig, a German artist who has, since 1992, made and installed the stones in cities all over Europe.  He installs them in the sidewalk in front of the houses where these people lived, or the schools where they studied.  The blocks are the same size as typical cobblestones, but are finished with brass on top, each one impressed with the person’s name, year of birth, dates of arrest and deportation, the camp each one was sent to, and (in nearly all cases) the date of extermination if known.  

Even this minimal data has chillingly specific implications.  Here, a family was arrested on December 7th, 1943, deported to Auschwitz on February 22nd, 1944, where the mother and two sons were exterminated four days after arrival – one was twelve, the other seven.  Only the father survived.  Every story has its own pathos.  The blocks memorialize just a fraction of all the people who were arrested and met such a terrible end.  “Born”.  “Arrested”.  “Deported”.  “Murdered”.  (Note that “assassinato” in Italian simply means murdered, not assassinated in the English sense.)  

Umberto Nizza, of Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 70.   Lucio Pernaci, of Corso Regio Parco 35.  Luigi Porcellana, of Corso Casale 10.  Fasciolo had been a student at the school in Corso San Maurizio 8.  He joined the partisan resistance rather than fight in the army of Il Duce, but was captured by the Germans, deported, and killed as a political.

Passersby will not actually stumble physically over the stones, but hopefully will stumble psychologically over the shameful past.  Since 1992 Demnig has placed (astonishingly) over 70,000 of these blocks in many European cities, with the cooperation of local authorities and associations.  He gets his names from surviving family members who wish to participate, and sometimes with the involvement of local schools whose students help, with their research (or with what they learn from their grandparents), to identify individuals for possible commemoration.  Otherwise he doesn’t impose himself in his wish to memorialize.  (Apart from being painfully reminded of what happened to their relatives, people might object to those relatives’ memorials being subjected to the indignities of the urban sidewalk.) 

Alessandro Levi, his wife Germana Garda in Levi, and their kids Luciana Levi and Sergio Levi, sixteen and fourteen years old, of Via Fratelli Carle 6.

Most of the stones in Torino are dedicated to Jews, but quite a few commemorate antifascists – resistance fighters, syndicalists, socialists, communists, and people who sheltered Jews (for example, a righteous Catholic priest).  The stones don’t specify Jewish or non-Jewish, but one can often infer this from the family names.  (There are not many Jewish families in all, and the same names tend to repeat.)  In some cases there are two, three, or four stones together at the entrance to a building where a whole family had lived.  (But probably not where they were arrested – rather than stay at home waiting for the knock at the door, most took refuge with relatives or friends in the small towns of the countryside, hoping to avoid the roundups.)  Besides close-ups of the blocks themselves, I photographed the entrances to the buildings.  

Filippo Acciarini, of Via Carlo Alberto 22.  Marianna Sacerdote, of Via Amedeo Avogadro 19.  Renato Forlino, of Via Spontini 26.  Luigi Fabbris, of Via Lauro Rossi 43.  Forlino survived more than a year in the camps only to die, at thirty-two, soon after the German defeat.  Acciarini was a journalist and a committed antifascist.  Fabbris was a syndicalist.

The entrance photographs are of little interest here.  They are generally of entrances typical of apartment buildings in Torino; many older, some more modern.  They only show the broad range of economic and social standing of the various victims of the Nazi-Fascist persecution – some of the professional classes, some merchants and manufacturers, artisans, and factory workers.  Some are in more or less the same condition as in the 1940s (lots of handsome woodwork and masonry, which will please the eye of any visitor even now).  A few are completely changed, where a new building replaced one that had been demolished, or even destroyed during the bombardments of the war.*

Remo Jona, the father, Ilka Vitale in Jona, his wife, and their sons Ruggero Achille Rodolfo Jona and Raimundo Luigi Eugenio Jona, of Via Filangeri 4, arrested in a small town north of Torino.  Remo, one of the few survivors of the camps, was forty-three.  The kids were eleven and six.  Remo’s wife and children were murdered on arrival in Auschwitz.

My personal connection to this (besides the merely human) is through my wife’s family.  She is Italian, Jewish on both sides.  Her parents and most of her relatives managed to escape to Switzerland when things started to get really dangerous.  But not everyone – my wife’s paternal grandfather was turned back at the Swiss border.  (It’s a sadly typical story; the Swiss police basically said, “That’s enough for today” after letting his wife enter, and sent him away.  Shortly thereafter he was found by a German patrol; he finished in Buna.)** 

Michele Tabor, of Via Martorelli 100.  Giacomo de Benedetti, of Via Campana 24.  Lina Zargani, of Corso Cairoli 32.  Eugenio Nizza, of Via Principe Tommaso 42.  Tabor was arrested for his part in the strikes of March 1944.  De Benedetti, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, was an engineer in an arms factory, arrested just the same because he was still a Jew by birth.

The photographs are arranged according to no particular scheme.  The captions include name, address of each person, with occasional comments.  I regret that I can’t tell the stories of all these people, or give equal attention.  Every name, presented along with the barest facts, asks the question “what happened to this person?”, and it is tempting to investigate.  I have read numerous capsule biographies of these individuals, and several gripping stories, much more than I can provide here.  These are told very well at https://pietre.museodiffusotorino.it/, the site of the Museo Diffuso della Resistenza, which offers a comprehensive list of names.  (The museum itself is well worth a visit.)  Clicking on the name of any individual brings up a brief biography in easily translatable Italian.  

Another convenient source of this biographical information and other facts about the stones is https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietre_d%27inciampo_a_Torino.

Sara Levi in Vitale, and Gemma Vitale in Servadio, mother and daughter, of Corso Alcide De Gaspari 14.  As Jews, they had to hide from the Nazi occupation as of Sept. 8, 1943, but were soon arrested, released, arrested again, and deported.  Sara was 89, Gemma 66; both killed on arrival at Auschwitz.

Any of the photographs can be seen larger by clicking on the image.  (Some are very hard to read otherwise.)  The photo enlarged, the caption may also be read via the little text symbol (like the Chinese character Ch’ien, or the simple trigram of the I Ching’s three moving lines) at the bottom right.  I regret that what follows may suggest nothing so much as a brick wall made of brass blocks – but the subject itself is a blunt instrument.

Renato Ortona, of Via Saluzzo 19.  Gelindo Augusti, of Via Vicenza 23.  Alberto Missaglia, of Via Principe Oddone 21 (formerly 83).  Donato Giorgio Levi, of Via Duchessa Jolanda 21.  Augusti was arrested as a political for his role in the strikes of March 1944.  Missaglia forged false documents, and printed the clandestine “L’Unità”.

The memorial blocks for Virginia Montalcini, 23, and Franco Tedeschi, 22, are placed at the liceo where both had been students, in Via Parini 8.  Both had taken refuge in small towns in the countryside, but could not evade capture - Virginia by Italian soldiers, Franco by Germans.

Enzo Lolli, of Via Giacinto Collegno 45, and his brother Corrado Lolli, of Corso Svizzera 33.  As a Jew, Corrado was expelled from the Fascist Party.  Both brothers were arrested together.  Gino Rossi, of Corso Guglielmo Marconi 38.  Alfonso Ogliaro, of Via Gioberti 69.  Rossi was tricked by a swindler.  Ogliaro was a syndicalist arrested for clandestine work.

Michele Valabrega, his wife Maria Irene Roscetti in Valabrega, and their daughter Stella Valabrega, of Via Po 25.  They were arrested by armed Fascists.  Stella Valabrega, only twenty at the time, is one of the few who survived the camps.  Her parents were killed on arrival in Auschwitz.

Renzo Fubini, of Corso Arimondi 11.  Pacifico Foa, of Corso Fiume 16.  Franco Levi, of Corso Marconi 7.  Ernesto Valabrega, of Corso Massimo D’Azeglio 23.  Fubini took refuge in a convent in Ivrea, but was denounced anonymously.  Valabrega, a Jew, was expelled from the Fascist party, and continued to run his furniture factory until he was denounced.

Enrico Colombo, his brother Benvenuto Colombo, and Benvenuto’s son Mario Colombo lived at Piazza Castello 161, and ran a clothing and fabric store right off Piazza Castello.  In 1938, constrained by the race laws, they put the store in the care of a trusted employee.  He ran the store for on their behalf, until he betrayed them to the S.S..

Arduino Cremisi, of Via Legano 28.  Marco Ottolenghi, of Via San Quintino 30.  Gino Voghera, of Corso Matteotti 31.  Padre Giuseppe Girotti, of Via San Domenico 0.  Marco Ottolenghi did not survive long enough to be exterminated; he died after barely four months at Auschwitz.  Girotti was arrested for his clandestine activities on behalf of Jews and partisans.

Donato Foa, the father.  Guido Foa, his son.  Elena Recanati Foa Napolitano, Guido’s wife.  They lived in Via Ormea 40, but were arrested in Canischio, a small town north of Torino.  Elena Recanati Foa Napolitano, a young woman at the time of her arrest, is one of the few who survived the camps.

Ferdinando Bagatin, of Via San Domenico 1.  Giorgio Sacerdote, of Corso Vinzaglio 2.  Giuseppe Davide Diena, of Via Mazzini 12.  Felicino Ottolenghi, of Via Gramsci 10.  Bagatin was designated a political prisoner.  Diena was a Jew and very active in the resistance.  Ottolenghi, arrested, resisted German torture to avoid betraying his father’s whereabouts.

Ugo Segre, his wife Iolanda Momigliano, and their son Tullio Segre lived at Corso Dante 90, but were arrested by Italians in Varese, a small city to the northeast of Torino.

Giacomo Tedeschi, of Via San Francesco Da Paolo 15.  Silvio Segre, of Piazza Carlo Emanuele II.  Pilade Momigliano, of Corso Palestro 9.  Luigi Rosso, of Via Carlo Matteucci 2.  Little is known of why Rosso was arrested, but it may have had to do with his profession as a printer - perhaps he was printing clandestine material.

Edvige Lattes, Itala Lattes, and Leone Lattes, siblings who all lived at Via Passalacqua 6.  Leone was arrested in a small town to the north of Torino.  When his sisters came to visit him in jail in Torino, they were recognized as Jews and arrested too, on the spot.

Giovanni Antonio Vacca, of Piazza Peyron 13.  Giuseppe Benetton, of Via Pagno 9.  Carlo Stratta, of Corso Racconigi 196.  Felice Scaringella, of Via Borg Pisani 29.  Vacca was arrested while attempting to liberate some political prisoners.  Benetton, Stratta, and Scaringella were also active in the Resistance.

Luciano Treves and Renato Treves, brothers and Jews active in the Resistance, lived in Via Campana 18 bis, and were arrested in Torino by Germans.  Rosetta Rimini and Lidia Pucci Tedeschi, mother and daughter, of Via Aurelio Saffi 13.  Two did not live to be exterminated; they died in the camps, Lidia in January 1945, not yet twenty, Renato in April, barely 22.

Guido Graziadio Foa, of Corso Palermo 86; arrested at the age of seven, killed on arrival at Auschwitz.  Rinaldo Corio, of Via Aosta 29, Giovanni Roncaglio, of Via Onorato Vigliani 172, and Rinaldo Sattanino, of Via Mirafiori 15, all led active and important careers in the Resistance.

Giacomo Ottolenghi and Giorgio Ottolenghi, brothers, of Corso Sommelier 35, were arrested in Torino.  Jacopo Franco and Gina Della Seta, husband and wife, of Via Cosseria 1, who tried to take refuge with relatives in Tuscany, but were arrested by Italians.  They had to give up their business, but were correctly paid after the war by their trusted employees.

Celestina Muggia in Sacerdote, the mother of Bice Sacerdote in Tedeschi, and her children Vittorio Tedeschi and Natalia Tedeschi, all of Corso Regina Margherita 89. The women were arrested together near Cuneo. Vittorio was arrested before; he was murdered only a few days before the camp was liberated. Natalia survived to testify about the Holocaust.

Dante Momigliano, Italo Momigliano, and Aldo Momigliano, three brothers who lived in Via Fontanesi 38.  Arrested separately by Italians, they were reunited at the camp Flossenburg, where they had almost consecutive numbers tattooed on their arms.  Aldo and Dante were killed after only a few days there; Italo died the following spring in Bergen-Belsen.

Teodoro Sacerdote and Rosetta Fubini in Sacerdote, husband and wife, lived at Corso Fiume 17.  They stayed at a hostel run by nuns in the countryside, but were arrested anyway.  Giovanni Bini and Enrico Mellano both of Corso Spezia 55, were arrested for political activities.

Abramo Segre and Rosa Segre, brother and sister, who attended the liceo in Via Duchessa Jolanda 27 bis.  Abramo, who worked as a bookkeeper, was betrayed as a Jew by a client who owed the company money.  Both were arrested at Chivasso, not far from Torino, by Germans.

Luigi Bachi, of Via Vigone 54. Vittorio Staccione, of Via San Donato 27. Raffaello Filippo Foa, of Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 40. Luigi Scala, of Piazza Vittorio Veneto 13. Bachi, a Jew, was arrested by Italians. Staccione was a soccer pro and antifascist. Foa, a Jew, was betrayed by Italians who knew him. Scala was a science professor and resistance fighter.

Moisé Adolfo Cremisi, of Via Principe Tommaso 11.  Giuseppe Abramo Levi, of Via della Consolata 1 bis.  Emanuele Balbo Bertone Di Breme, of Via Stampatori 4, was a career army officer who after 1943 refused to serve in the fascist army of Salò.  Levi was arrested by Italians.  Cremisi had to hide from the Nazi occupation in 1943, but was arrested near Lucca.

Auschwitz.  Mauthausen.  Dachau.  Bergen-Belsen.  Hartheim.  Gusen.  Flossenbuerg.  Melk.  Zoeschen.  Ebensee.  Schwechat.  Kaufering IV.  Janinagrube.  Le Nuove.  Fossoli.  Schelkow.

Born in a given year.  Lived here.  Worked here.  Studied here.  Deported.  Murdered.  Died upon arrest.  Survived.  Liberated.

The stones can record only the barest facts.  The historical record sometimes offers little more, perhaps the general circumstances of a given person’s arrest, perhaps something about a person’s activities that may have brought on the arrest – that is, if just being a Jew was not enough.  Sometimes there is a record of a prisoner’s being on a given convoy to this camp or that.  Often prisoners’ tattoo numbers are given, and whether they were designated as Jews or as political undesirables.  With certain individuals, the date and cause of death are known – the gas chamber usually.  With others, only an approximation of the date is possible.  Many simply died of the physical rigors of camp life and forced labor with starvation rations.  These persons’ stones still say “murdered”, however – Demnig’s choice of word rightly affirms that, although they extended over the course of months, these were murders no less than the murders of those were gassed, or shot summarily over a pit and burned.

Leone Sinigaglia, of Piazza Bodoni 6. Eleonora Levi, of Corso Massimo D’Azeglio 12, arrested at a clinic where she had just had a grave operation. Adua Nunes, of Via della Consolata 8, arrested at Moncalieri. Michele Tabor, of Via Martorelli 100, active in the Resistance. Leone Sinigaglia, “persecuted by the Italian Race laws 1938”, “dead upon arrest”.

One especially excruciating story is that of Luigi Nada, who attempted to escape the camp, but was caught and brought back, where, before a great formation of fellow prisoners, he was drowned, held down by guards in a barrel of water, to make an example to the others.

Perhaps more tragic is the story of the brothers Corrado and Enzo Lolli.  Enzo was a writer and philosopher; Corrado, a year younger, was devoted to bookbinding.  He had had polio as a child, and as an adult still had tremors.  (He was also a member of the Italian Fascist Party from 1932 until 1938 – but he did not resign due to becoming disenchanted with Fascism.  Rather, his membership was revoked because he was a Jew.  He wrote a passionate, indignant note to Mussolini protesting his expulsion.***)  When the persecutions became very threatening,  the various parts of the family took what measures they could.  (Corrado and Enzo had two other brothers as well.  Corrado had no wife or children; Enzo had a wife and two children, whom he placed in the mountains with family friends or with nuns in a convent that was sheltering Jewish children.)  

Salvatore Segre and Alberto Segre, father and son, of Via Principe Tommaso 18, arrested during partisan activities, betrayed by a fascist spy.  Here you can see the difference when someone looks after the stones.  I had just taken a photograph of the dirty memorial blocks, when someone came out to give them a good scrubbing down.  After & Before.

Corrado was arrested first, on June 6, 1944.  It seems that his captors promised him freedom if he would give them money or jewelry.  Corrado took them to his brother Enzo’s hiding place, the office of Enzo’s loyal friend.  Enzo in fact kept money and jewels safe in this office.  It would appear that Corrado knew this, and was ready to sacrifice his brother’s treasure to save himself.  Most likely he was mortally frightened.  Possibly he did not know that his brother was there at the time.  Whatever the case, Corrado’s captors double-crossed him – they arrested Enzo as well, and stole Enzo’s treasure.  Both brothers were sent to Le Nuove, the grim old prison in Torino, and then to the prison in Milano.  Not long after, they were sent to Auschwitz, arriving on August 6th, 1944.  Both were killed on arrival.

One can only wonder about the state of things between the two brothers, forced together during those two horrific months, two men who perhaps already did not see eye to eye with each other.  A tragic story, theirs.  Primo Levi said that he and the other survivors never saw the worst terror, never knew the real hell of the camps.  This was experienced only by those who were utterly swallowed by death.

Allen Schill

Torino, May 2019

Notes

* What would be more interesting, suggestive, or provocative, as photojournalism, would be to photograph the various places where those arrested were held, some of them subject to interrogation and torture:  mostly headquarters of the various kinds of police in Italy.  Unfortunately it is quite forbidden to photograph a police station of any kind.  I have been warned twice about this law.  Once I was taking a photo of a mural on an external wall of a caserma, a station of the carabinieri; a rather paranoid agent rushed out to make me stop.  Another time I was photographing a police building - not even realizing what it was - for its unusual curved brick facade, when a patrol car pulled up.  Two officers told me courteously but in due seriousness that this was a no-no; they were especially concerned because a few nights before, someone had tossed a molotov cocktail into the courtyard/parking lot there.  And this was just a headquarters of the Polizia Stradale, the traffic cops - victims of a molotov, imagine.  But nothing political in this case.  (It goes to show that they have their enemies.  Some drivers will do terrible things when they get too many traffic fines.)  I begged their pardon and agreed completely with their position against the throwing of molotovs.

** There’s a section of a public park here in Torino that has been designated “Parco Caduti dei Lager Nazisti”, or Park of the Fallen of the Nazi Camps.  There are a couple of signs and a bronze plaque with the name.  This has always irritated me for its tendentiousness, implying that it was all the fault of a bunch of nasty Germans, and that good Italian folks had nothing to do with it.  In reality, informers and fascist sympathizers (all of them Italian) were indispensable to the roundups of Jews and other “enemies of the state”.  Political whitewashing as usual.

*** Corrado Lolli wrote, through his Federale (an official of the party):  ”Duce, following the deliberations of the Grand Council, I, a Jew (Aryan race)* am honored to tender my resignation from the Party, saying however that when I entered fascism, I did it out of pure faith, and notwithstanding the (racial) decrees, I am Italian (underlined in the text), and these faiths no one can take from me.  Respectfully yours, Corrado Lolli.  I beg you, Federale, to pass this on to il Duce.”  

His political persuasion I find incomprehensible, as the values of Fascism seem to me utterly incompatible with the humanism essential to the Jewish tradition.  But his pride as a Jew and an Italian deserves respect.  (What he means by a Jew of the Aryan race is a puzzle; certainly an eccentric notion.)

I must acknowledge the help of Chiara Cavallerin of the Museo Diffuso della Resistenza in clarifying a few questions I had.  I also want to give a tip of the hat to Emily Raboteau, whose article in the New York Review Daily about Justin Brice Guariglia’s eco-signs, situated at the furthest reaches of New York City, jogged me into finishing my own article, and to Mik Awake, Emily’s companion on their pilgrimage to visit all the signs (and the author of an excellent article of his own about the signs).  What we had in common, their project and mine, was this aspect of pilgrimage.  They were contemplating the future, and I the past, but of course (as when crossing the street) you’ve always got to look both ways.  We meet in the present and ask ourselves, “Now what?”

Emily Raboteau’s article, “Climate Signs”:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/01/climate-signs/

And Mik Awake’s, “As We Approach the City”:

https://www.thecommononline.org/as-we-approach-the-city/

* Lolli’s own emphasis.

P.S.:  I haven’t had time to develop this idea, but it came to me (in connection with the pietre d’inciampo) that one might carry out similar projects to commemorate some of the many shameful episodes in American life which are insufficiently recognized by the public.  Think, above all, of the uncountable victims of lynching and other racially motivated violence - mainly African-Americans, but also Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Irish, Jews, and other despised minorities.  To say nothing of the death and destruction meted out overseas in pointless war, waged most often plainly for domination, and rarely for the sake of democracy or humanity or any virtue America supposedly stands for.  (Are these subjects covered by now in school history textbooks, hopefully much better than they were during my own public school days in the 1950s and ’60s?)  U.S. culture has whitewashed its own history:  a false, shallow, sentimental, provincial, and ignorant patriotism seems to be the default position of too many voters and too many politicians.  We need a more balanced and comprehensive notion of our past.  Perhaps a few memorials to shame would help remind us of our often grave faults, and teach us a genuine patriotism.