I sommersi. Roma 16 ottobre 1943

The exhibition The Submerged. Rome 16 October 1943 at the Capitoline Museums, curated by Yael Calò and Lia Toaff, is part of the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the roundup of 16 October 1943, when over a thousand Roman Jews - men, women, elderly people and children - were taken from all the neighborhoods of the city and deported by the Nazis to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where they found their death.

Throughout the exhibition we find lists of deportees, lists of the homes of Jewish families which the Nazi hierarchs took over, but also paintings and drawings, photographs, documents (in particular of identity), newspaper articles, clothes, rings, watches, family photos, school reports and even memories of the trenches of the First World War, phonograms from the police station, messages written by the arrested people. From all these materials emerges the daily life of all these people, torn from their homes on that tragic day, to whom an attempt is made to restore an identity and recognition through memory.

The exhibition itinerary therefore has a strong emotional impact on visitors, as it reflects the dimension of anguish, bewilderment and terror that the arrested Jews suffered and represents an opportunity to reflect, as a community, on the causes and consequences of these crimes.

The exhibition makes use of a selection of materials preserved in the Historical Archives of the Jewish Community of Rome, the Central State Archives, the State Archives of Rome, the Museum of Rome, the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center of Milan ( CDEC), National Library of Italian Judaism “Tullia Zevi” - Historical Archive of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, the Archive of the Jewish Schools of Rome, the Gramsci Institute of Rome, the lending families, the Archive of the Vatican Museums , the Barracco Museum and the Jewish Museum of Rome.

Photo credits: the Capitoline Museums official site