Journey/Reading/Chorus/Installation in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
“Work sets you free”: the same inscription that greeted the deportees at the entrance to Auschwitz now greets the audience at the entrance to the auditorium; the concentration camp is here today; the past is knocking at the door, and we have a duty to listen.
On the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Frantoio di Fucecchio offers a journey—that of the deportees and that of the audience—between past and present, so that the dialogue between the two eras remains alive. Over the course of the week, approximately 700 middle school students are called upon to bear witness. You cross the threshold of the concentration camp and you are no longer a human being; you no longer have an identity, only a number; comes the moment of stripping and shaving, dignity is torn away, you put on the uniforms and become an object among objects. It is “the machine,” a perfect mechanism operating to the rhythms of a factory, for the Holocaust is the daily repetition of simple, monotonous gestures. The performance, inspired by Guidi’s journey to the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, as well as her 2007 trip to Terezin and Ebensee with students from Cerreto Guidi, Vinci, and Sovigliana, aims to evoke a historical moment unparalleled in the physical, material, and spiritual harm inflicted upon millions of human beings: it is a testimony to the past, an invitation to discern its signs in the present.
When
January 31, 2009
Where
“La Tinaia” Auditorium, Parco Corsini – Fucecchio
