PROJECT PRESENTATION

"I have already written more than twenty books about those years and sometimes, I feel like I haven't even started; I get the impression that the memory is full, detailed, both stillburied within me and that's when it will rise from his hiding-place will Gush, strong and vigorous, for days on end." "The words, do not have the strength to cope with major disasters... Are poor, pitiful, insignificant. Even the ancient prayers have the strength to face misfortunes so great" "Storia di una vita" of Aharon Appelfeld.

Also this year the scientific section of the Institute "Epifanio Ferdinando" Mesagne wanted to continue their awareness towards the biggest tragedy ever perpetrated by men against other men: the Holocaust.
From time to time, we seek to deepen, with the help ofexperts and with the enthusiasm of our students, particular aspects and crucial arguments that have determined and made possible and concrete that immense and shameful tragedy that destroyed the life and history of millions of people in Nazi and Fascist Europe in the 30/40s of the last century.
In recent months we have deepened, in numerous meetings, the historical situation of Europe between the two world wars, the role of propaganda in the Nazi-fascist dictatorships, the content of the racial laws in Germany and in Italy, the Jewish question in Europe, we will treat it history of the European resistance to Nazi-Fascism and in particular the episodes of Jewish resistance in the European ghettos and in the concentration and extermination camps trying to understand the meaning of memory and the sense of evil in Jewish culture and religiosity. Stages of an approach to the visit of a symbolic place of the Shoah: the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps in Poland, a few kilometers from the city of Krakow.
Within this journey of knowledge, we wanted to focus our attention on the fate of so many men and women of different nationalities who, despite enjoying great fame for their sporting merits, did not escape the common and tragic fate of annihilation.
Men and women who had given prestige, with their victories and records, to many European nations, arrested, deported, killed and even forgotten.
Their records and their victories canceled, their names forgotten ...
As the historian Sergio Giuntini recounts in his book "Sport e Shoah": "It is estimated that among the victims of Nazifascism, (about six million people), the sports martyrdom is composed of about sixty thousand athletes, of which 220 high level".
We thought that there is still a duty of recognition towards their lives and their sporting achievements, and we have tried to partially repair the tear in the collective memory by remembering some of them through an exhibition.
Memories that come back to life ... .rights that bring back to life; people, sportsmen, men and women, Jews, Gypsies, opponents of Nazism, who we wanted to try to revive, telling small pieces of their history .... equal to that of many others.

To all of them, our recognition, through this small contribution.

Prof Salvatore Lezzi