The steps
of Remembrance
 

We, students of 4A of Liceo Classico Beccaria, imagining an ideal future  neighbourhood, have reflected on the importance of Memory. 

We have come to the conclusion that it is extremely important, not only to remember the people who died so tragically, but also to prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again in the future. This is the real value of Memory: why do we study History at school, why is this wound so present in our city after a century? Because it is absolutely inadmissible for Mankind to forget once again what makes us human.

 

While looking for a practical way, not just a symbolic one, to remember the past atrocities, we were struck by a project that had already been put into practice in Germany and all around Europe: as a matter of fact, today, walking along the streets of our city, we can also stumble into some stumbling stones: just 10 sq cm brass plates placed outside the homes of the Jewish people persecuted and murdered in the concentration camps. On the stones we can read their names, the date and place of deportation and of death. These stones aim to give back individuality and humanity to all of those who were first turned into mere numbers and then lost their life so tragically.

 

A quote from Primo Levi’s “I sommersi e i salvati”: “Human memory is a marvellous but fallacious instrument”. This is why we need to leave physical marks to make people remember the Holocaust, not only on 27th January, but every day.

 

It is no coincidence that these stones are called “stumbling” stones: they do not only have a physical and material meaning, but they also have a metaphorical one: these stones make it possible for everyone who is accidentally passing by to stop and remember the victims of the Shoah. 

 

For this reason, we have decided to recall these people’s lives, the lives of the victims, the lives of the people who lived and worked in Milan, and we hope that you too, by stumbling into one of these stones, can associate them with the incredible injustice each one of them endured. 

 

Therefore, we have chosen to recount the story of the Jews of our neighbourhood, to stumble into their life, into their stones, to remember a tragic chapter of our recent history, with the ink of our pens and the soles of our shoes. 

 

4A Liceo Classico Cesare Beccaria, Milano

School Year 2022/2023