Map

Since 2001, the Italian Republic has recognized January 27, the date of the demolition of the Auschwitz gates, as "Day of Memory", in order to remember the Shoah (extermination of the Jewish people), the racial laws, the Italian persecution of the Jewish citizens, Italians who suffered deportation, imprisonment, death, as well as those who, even in different fields and camps, opposed the project of extermination, and at the risk of their own lives have saved other lives and protected the persecuted. In Acqui The MEIC, together with the "A. Galliano Cultural Circle", the "Association for Peace and Nonviolence" and the "Diocesan Commission for Ecumenism and Dialogue between Religions", with the patronage of the Municipality of Acqui Terme and ISRAL of Alessandria, and the collaboration of the city schools, since 2001, organizes group work in schools, conferences, book presentations and commemorations that culminate in the common prayer between Jews and Christians. In 2017, a new important piece was added to the various initiatives: the laying of the “Pietre d’Inciampo” (Stumbling stones or blocks), the Stolpersteine, designed by the German artist Gunter Demnig. This is an art project that commemorates the victims of national socialism, keeping alive the memory of all Jews, Roma and Sinti, Homosexuals, Dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Victims of euthanasia who were deported and exterminated.

The Day of Remembrance is also celebrated in Acqui Terme in the name, indeed "in the names" of those who have been canceled, reduced to "human dust", from barbarism, but also in the sign of the Righteous, of those who offered their solidarity risk-free, exposing himself to the possibility of capital punishment, of reprisals, of seeing his house burned. In Acqui, 25 Jews were arrested and deported, who died in concentration camps or on transfer journeys: the youngest victim was Avito Bachi, killed in Auschwitz at the age of twenty-four, while the oldest was Smeralda Dina who died almost ninety years on the day of her arrival at Auschwitz. In addition, 5 civilians were arrested, deported and killed in concentration camps. Together they are reminded of the names of the non-Jews who helped the persecuted to hide, the name of those Righteous among the Nations that also the Acquese territory includes.

The memory of the Shoah has a strong interreligious relevance because it is a memory that seeks peace, a peace that refuses to consider others as enemies, that abandons the path of hatred, that does not want to cancel another nation, another religion , another ethnic group, another people. A desired peace because such events can no longer happen. The Day of Remembrance is always up to date today to defeat those who kill in the name of God. The past must serve as a lesson for the present and for the future. The Holocaust teaches that vigilance is always necessary in order to intervene promptly in defense of human dignity and peace.

The memory of the pain inflicted and suffered during the Shoah and the disturbance induced by the awareness of the near and remote causes of that tragedy have had a great religious relevance, because they have led to a change in relations between the Catholic Church, predominant in Italy, and the Jewish communities survived the tragedy. The memory of this pain and this disturbance has made possible an authentic listening and a sincere exchange, indispensable preconditions for the start of dialogue between Christians and Jews.

Vision and analysis of group work presented in these years by pupils of the schools of Acqui Terme.