“Giorno della Memoria” (Remembrance Day). A “Call for Musicians”

Every year on January 27, something very emotional happens on Park Avenue, right outside of the Italian Consulate and the Italian Cultural Institute: the Italian, Italian-American and Jewish communities commemorate the innocent victims of the Holocaust through an all day-long open-air reading of their names.

 

January 27 has been designated “Giorno della Memoria” (Remembrance Day) by the European Union in year 2000. The date has a strong symbolic meaning: on January 27, 1945, in fact, the Soviet Army freed Auschwitz from the Nazis. In 2005, the United Nations ratified this anniversary with a resolution, further stressing the importance of this date for all the people of the world.

 

The annual ceremony taking place on Park Avenue attracts not only the members of the Italian, Italian-American and Jewish communities in New York, but extends to a more general audience of passersby an invitation to remember and to meditate -- on the atrocities of the Shoah, on the foolishness of racism and on the need for integration, peace and cooperation to avoid discriminations, hatred and fear.

 

The event is public, open, and welcomes everybody’s participation, coherently with the intention of spreading a message of peace and tolerance. The attending guests alternate their presence at the podium and read the names of the 8900 Italian deportees out loud, and anybody can join in and stop to read and listen.

 

For this year’s commemoration -- which will take place on Park Avenue and 69th street from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm -- the Consulate General of Italy has once again joined forces with Primo Levi Center, the Italian Cultural Institute, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU, John D. Calandra Institute at CUNY, Italian Academy at Columbia University, Scuola d’Italia “Guglielmo Marconi”, i-Italy.org and Rai Corporation, and will enrich the traditional ceremony with a new and suggestive feature: the invitation to the public is not just the one to read, but to play music as a counterpoint to the ongoing reading.

 

A “Call for Musicians”, in fact, has been extended by the event organizers to all the instrumentalists who wish to contribute with their talent in creating the right atmosphere, providing an engaging and meditative soundscape for this important commemoration.


Musicians, solo or ensembles alike, are free to perform whatever inspires them, to improvise, or to play specific compositions, in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. What is asked of them is to determine the length of their participation, and to contact Alessandro Cassin (646-216-6955, [email protected]) indicating their instrument and preferred time of performance.

 

For more information, please visit www.primolevicenter.org