"Il giorno della memoria" commemoration

A commemoration of Italian Holocaust Remembrance Day Screening of Roberto Rossellini’s award winning film, General Della Rovere (1959) Roberto Rossellini’s award winning film, General Della Rovere (1959), is a masterpiece that tells the story of a black market criminal, brilliantly played by Vittorio De Sica, and his complex relations with the Nazis that occupied Italy after 1943. The film tells the story with great delicacy and sophistication, and engages themes still important in our postwar period: complicity versus redemption and how to negotiate this balance, that reflects the difficult position that Italy found itself in after the end of the war. What was Italy’s identity, after more than twenty years of Fascism, and how do issues of exclusion so prevalent then play out now both for the Italian Jewish community and for other minorities as well? Prof. Sergio Parussa, from Wellesley College, a specialist in Italian Jewish history and literature, will introduce the film for us and elaborate the important themes that the film addresses.