The contribution of creative young people to the passing on of the memory of the Holocaust is intertwined with the testimonies of survivors, so that we do not forget. Here is one, among many received, by Liliana Segre, together with a digital account (by IED Master course students) of the lives behind the Pietra d'Inciampo or Stumbling Stones placed in Milan, and a documentary on a courageous story of commitment at the time of Italian racial laws.
2023 Holocaust Memorial Day
Date
26 January 2023
The fight against all violence and discrimination, as well as the promotion of a culture of peace and acceptance, springs from the awareness of the past, which is fundamental to interpreting the present. It is with this conviction in mind that IED is participating in the celebrations marking the International Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust, continuing to raise awareness of the issue in its classrooms through creativity and design culture, and remembering the precious testimonies we have from the survivors of the extermination who are still alive today.
LISTEN TO ONE OF LILIANA SEGRE'S CONTRIBUTIONS HERE
DIGITAL STUMBLING STONES TO PASS ON THE MEMORY TO THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS
Lives and stories “adopted” by male and female students, comprehensively understood and then translated into an accessible narrative, to help keep the memory alive in an even wider and more shared way.
This is the Instagram History project: for the third year running, the postgraduate courses at the Milan centre are tackling a particularly delicate brief. The aim is the digitising the new stumbling stones that the city - through its Stumbling Stones Committee - lays in memory of those who were deported to the concentration camps.
26 lives and the same number of stones on which historical research has been carried out, to be given back in an Instagram carousel for the benefit of those (especially young people) who can take advantage of the immediacy of social media to learn and deepen their knowledge. The stories were recreated and told with a precise visual identity, following narrative lines using strong, recognisable graphic symbols or resorting to iconic elements (historical photos of places, images of objects and means of transport), the common denominators of these broken lives.
Students themselves - 19 young designers from the IED Master courses in Creative Direction, Digital Communication Strategy, Graphic Design, Event Management, Brand Management and Communication, Animation Design and Visual Arts for the Digital Age - have presented them at the Casa della Memoria (House of Memory) of the Municipality of Milan (the patron body of the project, which is supported by Liliana Segre).
A STORY OF COURAGE IN MILAN, A DOCUMENTARY
In 2021, five Video Design students made and directed - together with the Associazione Nuvolanove - the touching documentary La mensa dei bambini (The children's canteen). From the first snack in a dairy in Via Lecco to a real canteen, the film tells a story of courage and dedication during the years of racial persecution, that of a warm welcome place for lonely children, children of Jewish refugees in Milan, which grew to become a proper educational institution that was later destroyed by heavy bombing in 1943.
An intense and little known story, now brought back to the public in a documentary written and interpreted by class 2N of the Quintino di Vona-Tito Speri Institute, edited by teacher Alessandra Minerbi with Lucilla Tempesti of Nuvolanove, made and directed under the supervision of Davide Sgalippa and Enrico Carucci.
“Another barrack: the storeroom. Very long tables. Mountains of prison garb. As we ran, they threw the clothes at us: pants, jackets, shirts. In a few seconds we had ceased to be men. Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed”.
From Night by Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize 1986 (Giuntina publisher).
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