Memory, literature and empathy. A message from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Berlin and Ravesbrück based on Charlotte Delbo: ​​a didactic experience from the "Laura Bassi of Bologna" high school

Abstract

The “Laura Bassi” high school in Bologna enriches its training offering with projects dedicated to Holocaust Memory and human rights. These include one trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau and one to Wannsee, Ravensbrück and Berlin (fifth grade), following the witnessing of Charlotte Delbo, French resistant, deportee and writer-witness. The experience is accompanied by activities aimed at deepening the knowledge of the historical context of deportation and encouraging the historical and literary meeting with Charlotte Delbo, writer of exceptional intensity that emotionally involves the reader in her own experiences. Travels and visits are punctuated with readings of evocative passages and symbolic gestures - moments of strong emotional involvement for the participants. This is, in synthesis, the experience of a peculiar “Memory trip” in the footsteps of Charlotte Delbo: to open, eliciting empathy through the witness of literature, a profound reflection on justice and freedom of humankind.

Keywords

• memory
• delbo
• witnessing
• literature
• empathy