This is not an exhibition.
What you see is an installation dedicated to our research into the deportation of the Jewish community of Rhodes and Kos: a visual and artistic expedient with which we have tried to represent the results of study and analysis of the data, identity and documents of the Jews who were deported, as Italians, from the islands of the Aegean.
Each vertical element represents one of the 1,817 people deported. The length of each element varies in accordance with their age on the day they were deported, 23 July 1944. The deportees have been divided into ten age groups, represented by the ten different lengths of string that hang down, making it immediately obvious how many children and adolescents, together with younger adults and elderly men and women were deported on that one day. In this way the number of strings can be observed both in total and by age group.
The installation aims to create an immersive and participatory experience, bringing together as closely as possible past and present, women, men, the children and the aged of yesterday and today, in a historical framework that involves us from multiple perspectives. For that very reason, the installation has deliberately been left unfinished. If visitors do not engage directly with it, then it will remain merely a metaphor for an event whose outlines are becoming blurred in an ever more distant past.
Every visitor is therefore called on to contribute by taking a card from the container underneath and attaching it to one of the strings in the installation. The card must be attached to an empty string that fits the age of the person represented: shorter for younger and longer for older.
The cards represent people. Each one is inscribed with the name, date and place of birth and parents’ names of one of the 1,817 deportees: the essential data to identify a person.
The colours of the cards refer to the fate of each individual in the Shoah: pale yellow for those who died; turquoise green for those who survived.
On the back of the turquoise green cards is a QR code. By scanning this with a phone or mobile device, visitors can access a short video with excerpts from interviews recorded by the CDEC Foundation, in which survivors tell in their own words, with their own voices and gestures, something of their own stories.
At the end of the installation, a selection of archive films and audiovisual materials connect the story of the Jews of Rhodes to the history of Italy, Fascism and the experiences of Jews deported from Italy itself.
The cards in the container below are dedicated to each of the 1,817 people deported from the Jewish community of Rhodes and Kos.
- Choose a name and take the corresponding card.
- On the back of the card, check the person’s age from the details given.
- Walk through the installation and attach the card to one of the strings that are still hanging empty. Shorter strings must be used for younger people, and longer ones for older
