Houses and things, an exhibition for Memorial Day

Throughout the month of January, the 1563 Foundation is making available to the public a selection of documents recounting expropriations and seizures that followed the Fascist laws against the “Jewish race” of 1938. The exhibition The Houses and Things can be viewed at the 1563 Foundation headquarters in Turin or accessed online.

All the papers on display are part of the EGELI Fund (the entity created by the Fascist government with the task of acquiring, managing and selling real estate taken from Jews) and are kept by the 1563 Foundation within theHistorical Archives of the Compagnia di San Paolo.

The exhibition tells the story of the bitter fate that forced Italian Jewish families to leave their homes with much of the property they contained. Many did not return, such as Michele Valabrega and Silvio Segre, to whom the files at Via Po 25 and Piazza Carlo Emanuele II 15 are named. In front of those homes, the Stones of Injury commemorate their deaths in the death camps.
Among the stories chosen to illustrate those terrible years is also that of Natalia Ginzburg’s Turin home: the apartment on Via Pallamaglio 11 (today Via Oddino Morgari 32) mentioned in Lessico Famigliare. The inventory of property and the handwritten letter in which the writer requested the return of the apartment on December 20, 1945, are available.
Also visible are the files relating to the “Saccarello” farmhouse-the estate of Primo Levi ’s grandmother on the edge of the Superga road-that even list the trees that populated the villa’s garden.
Finally, documents are available on composer Leone Sinigaglia’s villa in Cavoretto, which was requisitioned, emptied of its furnishings and later used to house evacuees-a process common to many of the homes seized.

An interactive map locates the locations of homes taken from their owners in Piedmont, Liguria and particularly Turin.

The exhibit is conceived by the 1563 Foundation with historical archival advice from Fabio Levi and Anna Cantaluppi.

For info: www.fondazione1563.it

Hours: Monday through Friday until Jan. 31 from 4 to 7 p.m.
On Memorial Day 2019, the exhibition will also be open on Saturday, January 26 and Sunday, January 27 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Free admission.

Image: A courtyard in postwar Turin. Compagnia di San Paolo Historical Archives.

Houses and things, an exhibition for Memorial Day

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