Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, i.e. the three camps in which an unprecedented murderous operation took place between 1942 and 1943, the so-called Aktion Reinhardt, the extremely rapid and relentless killing of the Jewish population concentrated in the ghettos of the General Government, the heart of the former territory of Poland: the exhibition "The Nazi hell. The death camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka", set up at the Casina dei Vallati, exhibition venue of the Shoah Museum Foundation in Rome, starting from January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Remembrance Day, the exhibition 'The Nazi Inferno' inaugurated in Rome
A project of high scientific value, curated by Marcello Pezzetti, but also very hard and exciting, which through documents, photos, films (including material made by the Nazis), interviews and reconstructions tells the complete extermination for the first time, by exhaust gases, in these fields.
At the inauguration today, institutions were present, from the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, to the mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri, from Mario Venezia, president of the Shoah Museum Foundation, to Sami Modiano, witness who survived the concentration camp, and then the ambassador of Israel in Italy Alon Bar, Riccardo Di Segni, Chief Rabbi of Rome, Ruth Dureghello, President of the Jewish Community of Rome.
If for Sangiuliano, who admitted that he was emotionally tried by the journey, it is necessary "to reaffirm the uniqueness of the Shoah, which was absolute evil", for Gualtieri "The extermination of the Jewish people was a bureaucratic and inhuman exercise, we condemn it to pay tribute to the victims and survivors but also to keep all humanity on guard".
The words of Sami Modiano, 92, survived and still eager to testify are touching: "As long as I have strength and life, I will pass on what happened to the boys", he said with emotion, "I have faith and hope in those who will come after us ".
The exhibition also includes a multimedia and immersive section which documents, also by presenting the reconstruction of a model of the Treblinka camp, the atrocious gassing procedures perpetrated in the three concentration camps.
The chosen approach is that of the 'truth', without hiding anything from the eyes of the public, not even the most dramatic materials: for this reason, assured Mario Venezia, "We will be careful not to let children enter the exhibition. I myself, despite having visited Treblinka, seeing the field represented in the exhibition I was emotionally affected".
Along the way, the materials return a tragedy that still makes us shiver: undernourished and almost naked children in the ghettos, a life worn out by an everyday life devoid of dignity between violence and hunger, the ferocious and systematic deportation and finally the many, too many masses of men, women and children sent to die in gas chambers, in places with no more hope or humanity: because going to the Aktion Reinhardt camps (in honor of the head of the security police, Reinhardt Heydrich, executed by the Czech resistance fighters) meant, as he explains to ANSA the curator Pezzetti, "be killed. You entered only for that. In just 100 days more than a million and a half people were killed in the three camps. Attention in Italy is entirely concentrated on Auschwitz, because there are been deported from our country,but we forget that this was the greatest murderous operation carried out by the Nazis, the heart of the Holocaust".