Wednesday,
June 27,
Roman Jews Have Trouble Defining
Intolerance
The
ANNOTICO Report
Since
the end of WWII, the Jews of every city worldwide wanted a
However,
in
Zevi drew up plans for the new museum, the Museum of
Intolerances and Exterminations, and he and his colleagues brought the
proposal to
But as the
millennium approached, bureaucratic hurdles gave way to substantive obstacles,
and the project got caught in the middle of an intense and revealing Jewish
communal debate on the nature of intolerance. Members of the Jewish community
wondered whether it might be better to commemorate the Holocaust first,
before broadening to include other atrocities. Zevi
argued that a museum taking a broad view of atrocities itself
constitutes a commemoration of the Holocaust, and a museum that focuses narrowly on Jewish
experience misses the point.
Zevi argued, at stake in the
transition is more than just architectural plans. Lost was the most deep
lesson from the Shoah: that intolerance against one group is a danger
to all.
For Zevi, an examination of the intolerances and
genocides of our time is a direct response to the Holocaust, one that acknowledges
the full implications of Intolerance rather than focusing
myopically on the tragedy of Jewish experience in World War II.
Zevi lost.
How To Define Intolerance? A
Roman Quandary
Museums
The
Jewish Daily Forward
Wednesday. June 27, 2007
In late February
1997, a group of Roman artists and intellectuals met to prepare for the
millennium. Unlike its cultish counterparts, this group did not expect any
universal shifts to come with the year 2000. The members believed that life in
the 21st-century would probably look much like it did in the 20th, and the 19th
and before. Their task, as they defined it, was not to prepare humankind for
redemption but to take the change of centuries as an opportunity to learn from
history.
Specifically, the
group envisioned a provocative learning institution that might draw meaning out
of the past and stimulate critical self-reflection in the present. Following
philosopher Hannah Arendt, they believed in the banality of evil and hoped to
bring to
Luca Zevi, a leading Roman architect and a member of the group,
drew up plans for the new museum. He designed an elaborate complex, featuring a
core exhibition space documenting European intolerance and genocide and three
twisted arms reaching out to hold exhibits on violence in Africa, Asia and the
But as the
millennium approached, bureaucratic hurdles gave way to substantive obstacles,
and the project got caught in the middle of an intense and revealing Jewish
communal debate on the nature of intolerance. Members of the Jewish community
wondered whether it might be better to commemorate the Holocaust first, before
broadening to include other atrocities. Zevi argued
that a museum taking a broad view of atrocities itself
constitutes a commemoration of the Holocaust, and a museum that focuses
narrowly on Jewish experience misses the point.
And
But the Jewish
community pushed for a Holocaust museum, and the municipality gave its consent.
Zevi stayed on as the projects architect, but
the design elements of his initial scheme have changed. When he presents his
latest plans January 27,
At stake in the
transition is more than just architectural plans. Lost
was what Zevi considers the most
deep lesson from the Shoah: that
intolerance against one group is a danger to all. For Zevi,
an examination of the intolerances and genocides of our time is a direct
response to the Holocaust, one that acknowledges the full implications of the
Jewish genocide rather than focusing myopically on the tragedy of Jewish
experience in World War II.
At a time when
every European city seems to want a Holocaust museum, perhaps it should not be
surprising that Zevi is in the minority in
But in a city as
old and as layered as
We are very
Roman, Zevi said, and explained that he can
trace his paternal lineage back to Rome in the first centuries C.E. Speaking of
the Jewish community as a unique phenomenon, he argued that its
continuous presence in Rome allowed for the development of a Roman Jewish
community that counts among the citys great syntheses.The
distinctive experience of his community, Zevi
suggests, manifests itself in a Jewish identity that includes none of the
outsider mentality, none of the sense of marginalization or identification with
oppression that characterizes so much of the Diaspora Jewish Experience. With
such an identity, the Jews of Rome should have no need to focus narrowly on the
suffering of Jews; they are, Zevi suggests, in a
unique position to take a universalistic approach to human rights.
Uniquely
positioned as the Roman Jewish community may be, though, it remains a Jewish
community with a memory of the Holocaust, and, like so many other Jewish
communities, a profound need to have that memory made public. Its not
because Italian Jewish history is particularly violent, in the scheme of things
in fact, compared with Germany and
its other neighbors, Italy was relatively good to the Jews during World War II.
Mussolini had no personal investment in Jewish genocide, and
But perhaps
because World War II chipped away at the great synthesis that was the Roman
Jewish community, or because communities are inherently interested in
preserving their own, Jewish community leaders withdrew support for Zevis museum and lobbied for legislation enabling a
Holocaust museum. Perhaps because of the new popularity of Holocaust
commemoration in European cities, plans are under way for a federal museum in
Disappointed as
he was about the failure of the
The architecture
is heavily symbolic: The wall of light underscores the disparity between light
and dark, and the heavy box evokes the weight of tragedy. But, like Libeskinds Jewish museum in
But
theres one thing that keeps Zevi excited about
the Holocaust museum. The project is sited for the grounds of a 19th-century
neoclassical estate now being redeveloped into a museum park. The estate, Villa
Torlonia, served as Mussolinis country home for
a short time while he was dictator, and the irony of that coincidence has not
escaped public notice and may even have contributed to the municipalitys
decision to site its Holocaust museum there. Appropriately for
There is another
aspect of the projects site that has deeper historical resonance for Zevi. Located beneath the grounds of Villa Torlonia is a Jewish catacomb, one of five in
Zevis father, eminent
architectural critic Bruno Zevi (1918-2000), spoke to
the Roman Jewish community in June 1974, saying that the series of wandering
underground passageways literally corroded, undermined the very
foundations of the great Roman city that stretched above them, going
underground to burst the earthly city above.
For Bruno Zevi, the catacombs served as evidence of a historical
assertion of a Jewish identity that manifests itself in the wandering of the
underground passages. For Luca Zevi, the catacombs
that lie beneath the site of his new museum add another level of questions to
the project. The passages, which will be restored and made open to the public
as part of Zevis museum project, will beg
questions about the museum above.
Adina Lopatin researched the life and work of Bruno Zevi at his archives in Rome last summer, thanks to a
Marshall-Allison Fellowship from the history of art department at Yale.
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