This document discusses the history and development of Holocaust museums in Italy. It begins by defining different categories of Holocaust museums, including those built on historical sites and those dedicated specifically to commemorating the Shoah. The document then outlines the early Holocaust memorials and museums established in Italy up until 1989, including sites like the Risiera di San Sabba. It proceeds to discuss some recent and current Holocaust museum projects in Italy, such as the expansion of the Maison d'Izieu and the planned MEIS museum in Ferrara. The document emphasizes that Holocaust museums in Italy serve as bulwarks against denying or trivializing the Shoah and help shape collective memory in a peaceful, democratic manner.

1. Museums and Shoah, from yesterday to today:
the case of Italy
Paolo Coen - Università degli Studi di Teramo
www.paolocoen.blogspot.it
Twitter: @paolocoen67

2. Structure of the paper
1. Museology of the Shoah: definition, classification and
examples
2. The case of Italy, up to 1989
3. The case of Italy: recent buildings and current projects

3. Structure of the paper
1. Museology of the Shoah: definition, classification and
examples
2. The case of Italy: up to 1989
3. The case of Italy: some recent buildings and current projects

4. A basic question: what is a Museum?
Museums are basically collective memory machines.
As such, museums were established in the XVIIIth
century, first in Rome, then in Florence and London.
Their primary functions were to preserve beautiful or
‘important’ objects; to promote research; to
communicate their own knowledge to the public.

5. Definition
Modern museums are institutions, either public or
private, aimed at preserving, studying and
expanding to the public the knowledge of single
or series of cultural assets.
Each cultural asset, no matter if material or
immaterial, has to do with the concept and the
value of collective memory.

6. Categories: Museums and the Shoah
• Museums built or installed on – or close to –
sites where historical events connected to the
Shoah took place
• Museums of individual Jewish communities or
of the entire Jewish people
• Shoah, or Holocaust Museums per se

7. Museums built or installed on – or close to – sites where
historical events connected to the Shoah took place

10. Museums of individual Jewish communities
or of the entire Jewish people

15. Shoah, or Holocaust Museums per se

16. Holocaust Museums
• What?
• Who?
• When?
• Where?
• Why?

17. Musei della Shoah in Israele
• Ghetto Fighter’s House, 1949
• Yad Vashem, 1953
• Yad Mordechai , 1967

18. Israel Katnelson’s Holocaust Museum
Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, Ghetto Fighter’s Museum
10 km from Akko e da Naharia
1949

22. Yad Vashem
Jerusalem
1953

25. Holocaust Museum
Kibbutz Yad Mordechai
1967

31. Shoah Museum outside Israel
1993. United States Holocaust and Memorial
Museum, Washington
1993. Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
1993. Holocaust Museum, New York
1996. The Holocaust Museum, Houston

32. 2000. The Holocaust Exhibition, Imperial War
Museum, Londra
2000. Jüdisches Museum’s new wing, Berlin
2005. Musem and Memorial of the Killed Jews
of Europe, Berlin
2009. Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education
Centre, Skokie, Chicago

33. Structure of today’s paper
1. Museology of the Shoah: definition, classification, examples
2. The case of Italy: up to 1989
3. The case of Italy: some recent buildings and current projects

36. The Risiera di San Sabba, i.e. San Sabba’s Rice Factory
Trieste
1966-1975

43. The Memorial and Museum of Deportation
Carpi
1973

51. Memorial of the Italian Inmates in Auschwitz
Florence, Campi Bisenzio, formerly Auschwitz, Block 21
1975-1980

53. It’s old wisdom, as already warned Heinrich Heine,
who was both German and Jew: who burns books
will eventually burn men. Violence is a non-
extinguishable seed.
Primo Levi

58. Structure of today’s paper
1. Museology of the Shoah: definition and classification
2. The case of Italy: up to 1989
3. The case of Italy: some recent buildings and current projects

59. Andrea Bruno
Project for the expansion of the Maison d'Izieu
2008

65. Luca Zevi
Museo della Memoria e dell’accoglienza
Memory and Friendship Museum
Nardò
2009

69. Annalisa de Curtis and Guido Morpurgo
Track 21 Memorial
Milano

75. Scape Group
MEIS - National Museum of the Italian Jews and of
the Shoah
Ferrara
Under construction

77. Scape Group - Paolo Mezzalama, Francesco
Marinelli, Alessandro Cambi, Ludovica Di Falco

81. Luca Zevi
Shoah Museum
Rome
On its way

88. Conclusions
Out of Israel, the Museums of the Shoah have been
created so to fulfill the demand arose by modern
democracies of the Western world.
They are a strong part of our collective memory. They try
to orient it, to shape it in pacific, democratic and
reasonable terms.
They serve as ramparts of Memory: in Italy, they are
ramparts against the banalization and denial of the Shoah.

89. Key factors in the building process
• the ‘tactical scenario’, eg Italian political balance
and changes
• the global and European scenario
• to accept the memory Shoah and transform it
into the key factor in the peace-process of
Europe