“La nostra fratellanza nel dolore”: the Jewish Community of Rome and the ‘Other’ Genocides

Abstract

This paper investigates how, if, and to what extent the Jewish Community of Rome interacts with the commemoration of other acts of genocide, mass killing, and ethnic cleansing. I focus mostly on the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Nazi extermination of Romani people, and I analyze how the Jewish community has been in dialogue with these communities and their memory practices. As an introduction, I discuss the little-known story of the unmade Museo delle Intolleranze e degli Stermini [Museum of Intolerances and Exterminations], which was planned in the late 1990s to be built in the capital city of Italy. In the conclusion, I highlight how we can speak of a ‘kaleidoscopic’ memorial world of the Jewish community of Rome that includes several different acts of commemoration and memory practices.

Keywords

• Italian holocaust memory
• Jewish community of Rome
• comparative memories of genocides
• memory politics
• Museo delle Intolleranze e degli Stermini
• holocaust and genocide studies