WITH THE PATRONAGE OF
PRESIDENZA DEL CONSIGLIO DEI MINISTRI
AND REGIONE CALABRIA
Holocaust Remembrance Day Concert
PROMOTED BY
UNIONE DELLE COMUNITÀ EBRAICHE ITALIANE
narrator
PEPPE SERVILLO
JANUARY 26, 2017
AUDITORIUM PARCO DELLA MUSICA
SALA SINOPOLI, ROME
8.30 pm
© PHOTO ASCDEC Kalk Collection | visual design cromofilla
project by Viviana Kasam and Marilena Citelli Francese
based on the research by Raffaele Deluca
WHIT THE SUPPORT OF
WE THANK MRS. BETTINA SCHWARZ
FOR HER GENEROUS CONTRIBUTION
A Colorful Night (Bunter Abend)
This is the title of the concerts organized by the musicians detained in the Ferramonti
concentration camp near Cosenza, in Southern Italy, between 1940 and 1943.
View of Ferramonti concentration camp - March 19, 1943
This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day concert will present this incredible but
forgotten piece of Italian history. The musician and musicologist Raffaele Deluca
fortuitously found the musical archives of Ferramonti, which include over 300 scores.
The vast trove of mostly unpublished manuscripts - as well as diaries, letters and
notes from the prisoners - piece together the strong role music played in the camp.
Ferramonti was the biggest concentration camp in Italy, where over 2000 Jewish
people were detained, mainly from Germany, Austria and the former Yugoslavia.
Many of the prisoners were professional musicians, including famous artists such as
Oscar Klein, Siebert Steinfeld, Paolo Gorin, Kurt Sonnenfeld and director Lav Mirski.
With permission from the camp commander they would organize high-caliber musical
entertainment. Sonnenfeld, a young Viennese pianist, was captured in Milan as he
was trying to flee to the United States. He was put on a train departing from the
notorious platform number 21 of the main railway station, Stazione Centrale - destination
Ferramonti.
Oscar Klein
Lav Mirski
Kurt Sonnenfeld
The concert will be based on an amazing musical and historical treasure: Sonnenfeld’s
diary, or Tagebuch, along with photos and documents from life in the camp.
The Ferramonti camp is a unique moment in Italian history, which is particularly
relevant during this contemporary time of violent radicalization of ethnic and religious
conflicts.
Even though the camp was created to isolate and persecute minorities after racial
laws were issued in Italy, the generosity of the local population and the humanity of
several top police officers, including Paolo Salvatore, Leopoldo Pelosio and Mario
Fraticelli, as well as the chaplain, Father Callisto Lopinot, allowed for better living
conditions than most camps.
The catholic choir in Ferramonti with Father Callisto Lopinot and Lav Mirski
This leniency caused friction between the fascist militia and some of the camps
officers, causing some of them to eventually lose their posts.
Ferramonti was ultimately liberated by the Allies in 1943, and nobody detained there
was sent to concentration camps in Germany. After the liberation, Jewish prisoners
who had nowhere to go were allowed to continue living in Ferramonti until 1945.
Today, however, nothing much remains of Ferramonti.
The barracks were destroyed and a highway has been built across the land. Bringing
it back to memory - especially on the Holocaust Remembrance Day - is a good
opportunity to finally come to terms with this shameful page in recent Italian history.
It can also serve as a warning against those who diminish the persecutory nature of
fascism and of Italian racial laws, and against persecution in all forms, in this moments
when walls and barbed wires are again built.
The concert is at its heart a tribute to the strength, the courage and the creativity of
men and women who, despite dire circumstances, managed to maintain their dignity
and their desire to keep culture alive.
It is also a way of remembering those who risked their own positions to help the
prisoners create this unique opportunity of artistic expression, granting moments of
peace and compassion in an otherwise cruel context. Their message is that each
individual can do something to oppose persecution.
Ferramonti’s musicians
During the concert we will present music played in the Ferramonti camp, some of
which composed by Sonnenfeld. The diverse collection will include songs of the
period, with a focus on cabaret, vaudeville and klezmer music.
A group of outstanding musicians will accompany singers Lee Colbert and Myrian
Fuks, including Italy’s top jazz trumpet Fabrizio Bosso.
Internationally famous actor Peppe Servillo will recount the history of Ferramonti and
of those who were detained there, reading excerpts from the letters, diaries and
messages discovered by Raffaele Deluca.
A Colorful Night is a premiere show and will be filmed and broadcast live by RAI5.
The concert is possible thanks to the support of World Jewish Congress and Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Regione Calabria, Carical and Bolton Group, and the generous
donation of Mrs. Bettina Schwarz.
ORGANIZED BY