Italian Embassy Remembers Holocaust with Kinderblock Screening
Image Courtesy of ChaiFlicks
By Dean Robbins
The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute presented a free screening of the recent documentary Kinderblock: L’ultimo Inganno for Holocaust Remembrance Day. The film was accessible digitally between Thursday, January 27 and Sunday, January 30, 2022. It was originally planned as an in-person event until COVID-19 surges scuttled those plans.
Before the screening, Italy’s ambassador to the US Mariangela Zappia and Italian Cultural Institute acting director Fibio Finotti gave opening remarks. Zappia emphasized the importance of history, saying the goal was to “keep the memory of horror alive and reject all forms of hatred and violence.” This was followed by an eleven-minute discussion with director Ruggero Gabbai and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Chief of Film, Oral History, and Recorded Sound Leslie Swift. Gabbai has directed over 15 documentary features and shorts. He is most well-known for 1997’s Memoria, which was shown at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival.
Memoria and Kinderblock both center around the experience of Italian Jews in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. However, Kinderblock narrows its focus onto four children who not only went through Auschwitz, but also encountered the monstrous experiments of Dr. Mengele. The title is a reference to the children’s blocks in Auschwitz, not the famous Kinderblock 66 at the concentration camp Buchenwald. The subtitle “L’ultimo inganno” translates to “the final deception,” representing the lies Mengele and the Nazis told children about their future in the camps.
Three survivors told their stories throughout the film: twins Tati and Andra Bucci from Italy, who previously appeared in a deleted section of Memoria, and Kinderblock survivor Oleg Mandic from Croatia.
Gabbai called the production “difficult” due to having to shoot it in only two weeks. Tati and Andra tell their stories in the places where they happened, including the Auschwitz and Neuengamme concentration camps. When one sister is talking, the other is positioned just a few yards away in the same room. This highlights how their close bond helped them through the horrors of the camps.
Holocaust Remembrance Day takes place every year on January 27th.
