The Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura (1563 Foundation for Art and Culture) of the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Museo Nazionale dell’Ebraismo italiano e della Shoah-MEIS (National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah) present the REMEMBR-HOUSE Project, funded by the European Union in the framework of the CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Value) Program. The project is focused on preserving the memory of the Shoah and will run for two years from 2023 to 2024. It is intended to be a tool for teachers, educators, cultural practitioners, students and a global audience.
REMEMBR-HOUSE offers civic education courses for teachers, educators, and students, engaging, digital and innovative approaches and tools with a strong emphasis on historical research and information literacy. The project includes workshops with students, training for teachers and professionals, dissemination activities, multimedia content and the production of bilingual teaching kits and manuals.
The Theme: House and home, a Place of Memory
“How would we feel if we had to give up our possessions? unimportant objects that, are enriched with meaning, memories, happy times, love and sorrow throughout our lives?”
The house is the centre of the project, in both its physical and emotional spaces: family, refuge, security, sharing, and constraint are just some of the many meanings it evokes.
Following a digital humanities approach, the Historical Archive of the Compagnia di San Paolo becomes the starting point to explore the history of the 20th century: the papers of the EGELI Fund make it possible to retrieve detailed lists of the confiscations of Jewish assets in Piedmont and Liguria after the Italian Fascist government approved the Racial Laws in 1938, and in the years that followed.
The house is an extraordinary means of approaching the history of the Shoah: reviving the memory of lost rooms and objects establishes a link with the past and with individual stories that become symbols to rethink the present and fundamental human rights.
The Fondazione 1563 contributes to the project with its archival heritage, research resources and the results of years of study on its papers. REMEMBR-HOUSE re-develops the insights for the study of the Shoah using the papers held by the EGELI Management Service of the San Paolo Institute in Turin, a crucial archival fund that witnesses the impact of the 1938 Racial Laws on private property, turning documents into teaching materials. The archive contains the papers relating to the administration of the confiscation of Jewish movable and immovable property in Piedmont, Liguria, and the Aosta Valley which have been inventoried, digitalized, and studied by researchers and relatives of those who suffered dispossessions and compulsory expropriation. The archive includes include digital research tools and relative narrative content and is the starting point for teaching activities.
The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS) was established in Ferrara with the mission of telling over two thousand years of the history of Italian Jewry and pass on the Memory of the Shoah: embracing and appreciating diversity is what has always enriched our societies culturally and humanly.
Through the experience of the Jewish minority, the Museum seeks to give everyone voice and to encourage the free flow of ideas. The development of the teaching kits will contribute to the construction of the houses of memory. By editing the manual, the MEIS contributes its expertise to the REMEMBER-HOUSE project to ensure an accurate and incisive teaching of the Shoah. This mission is the hallmark of the MEIS Museum and establishes it as a reference point for schools across Italy.
