"Here lived...": commemorating Italian Jews who died in the Holocaust

in Pigneto

If you look down once in a while in Rome, you may find a small brass plaque beginning "Qui abitava"or "Here lived," with a name, date and other information in Italian.  Like the one above:

Here lived
Fernando
Nuccetelli,
born 1903
arrested for his politics
January 4, 1944
deported
Concentration Camp Mautausen
died April 23, 1944

Here lived Silvia Sermoneta, born 1897, arrested Oct. 10, 1943,
deported, Auschwitz, assassinated July 15, 1944, on via Salaria

Almost 100 of these "stolpersteine" (iin German) or "stumbling blocks" ("pietri d'inciampo" in Italian) are on the streets of Rome, and over 40,000 in 10 countries in Europe and Russia.  The project of German artist Gunter Demnig, they commemorate Jews, Roma, and others, like Nuccetelli, a political prisoner, who died in the Holocaust.

More than 1000 Jews were deported from Rome to the camps late in World War II, as Nuccetelli's plaque reveals. Of the 2000 Italian Jews deported, only 102 survived.



The 4-inch (10 cm) cube stolpersteine is laid flush with the sidewalk, usually in front of the last known residence of the victim.  In Rome, this often  means the stolpersteine replaces a sanpietrino, or cobblestone-like block of the sidewalk and is noticeable not so much for its shape, but the shiny brass. They were laid in Rome in 2010 and 2011, in many of the city's municipalities, including many in the city's old Jewish ghetto.



Relatives of one who escaped the round-up, on via Arenula

We stopped this year in front of two on via Arenula along largo di Torre Argentina, while walking on the street with friends visiting Rome for the first time from the United States. As we were trying to explain the stones, a relative of those who died came out of the building.  He had lost his aunts, uncles and all his cousins, he told us.

Scandalously, 3 of the stones were stolen in Rome in 2012.

Dianne

Here lived Laudadio di Nepi, born 1882, arrested Oct. 16, 1943,
deported, Auschwitz, died during transport; also on via Salaria,
at the same address as Silvia Sermoneta

The Stones of Rome

If you've been in Rome more than 15 minutes, you've noticed that many of the streets are paved with square black stones--very "picturesque." Here we have some pidgeons having an early morning pizza on this picturesque surface.

The stones are called sanpietrini (little Saint Peters--a reference to their use in the early 18th century in St. Peter's square, after the coach carrying the Pope nearly tipped over), and they have an inverted-pyramid shape that resembles a molar. They're a bit like icebergs, with most of their bulk below the surface. To give you some idea of an average-size sanpietrino, I asked Dianne to hold one in her hand (below right).

According to Fulvio Abbate's Roma, a "non-conformist guide to the city" (one of our favorite books when we can understand it), these paving blocks first appeared in the 16th century, to facilitate the smooth movement of carts through the streets. Having suffered through kilometer upon kilometer of sanpietrini on the back of a scooter known to have a rather stiff rear-end suspension (that's the scooter's rear-end we're talking about), Dianne isn't so enamoured of the "smooth" ride these blocks of basalt are presumed to produce. And, as every scooter driver knows, and as bicycle racer Denis Menchov discovered on a straightaway in the final kilometer of the last time trial of the Giro d'Italia, with the Coliseum in view and the finish line--and glory--around the curve, dampened sanpietrini are, well, really, really slippery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYUfYzHEjdc

If Dianne were mayor every street that we ride on would be dependable asphalt. But she isn't, and so we now and then can take pleasure in watching a sanpietrino (also the word for a craftsman who installs the blocks) ply his centuries-old trade (video below from Piazza del Gesu'). Rome's artists, too, have found the streets of sanpietrini the stuff of inspiration, as we discovered one evening at a small gallery in Ostiense (left), where Giovanni Liberatore was showing his sensuous, closeup photos of wet and oily pavement.

And, for the time being--until Dianne gets her way--Romans will now and then pick up a loose one, take it home, and use it for a doorstop. Bill