A memory case. The Warsaw ghetto uprising in post-war recollection

On the seventieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto revolt, the A. investigates the trails of the ghetto post-war memory in order to appraise at least two of the complex mechanisms regulating the Shoah memory both in Israel and within the Diaspora. The first one concerns the cultural means used by Italian hebraism to outline a public stand of its own on the insurgents. The diffusion of a specific mnemonic pattern has been brought about in the main through the Italian Jewish press, torchbearer of a peculiar Zionist interpretation of the voices of the survivors on the occasion of public recurrences and commemorations. The second, connected aspect, refers to the political nature ascribed to the revolt. The cover story, so to speak, would generally point out the relevance of the armed resistance and the indomitable will to fight to the death of the combatants. The Zionist option characterizing the political view of most combatants thus appears to have been a privileged channel by which contemporary Hebraism would build an important part of its identity after the Shoah.

Keywords: Warsaw ghetto uprising, ghetto memory, Zionism and Shoah, Italian Jewish press, survivors’ memoirs, Israel and the Diaspora

Elena Mazzini, Un caso di memoria. La rivolta del ghetto di Varsavia nel secondo dopoguerra in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 272/2013, pp 402-424, DOI: 10.3280/IC2013-272003