The documents of the Water Institute described in the “virtual” exhibition
Legnano – On the evening of Thursday 18 April, the great hall of the Istituto Dell’Acqua hosted a series of interventions that recounted the path that brought important archive papers to light, especially those relating to the twenty years of fascism.
After the introduction of the professor Vincenzo Ferrarawhich has reconnected the threads with the recent publication dedicated in 2023 to the century since the water management passed from municipal to state management (here is our article), it fell to the prof. Giancarlo Restelli retrace the sad path of the shameful racial laws, promulgated by the regime in 1938, against the Jews, when only some time before the same fate had befallen other parts of the empire, those inhabited by dark-skinned populations such as Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.
The teachers of the Institute, Nicoletta Albertalli And Elena Dell’Acquathey talked about the breadth of the amount of documents that lie in the school’s archives, digitized and “shown off” in the virtual stages, well illustrated by the projections of the students of the fifth art high school, coordinated by the teacher Federica Loriggiolawho have explored the various aspects: from report cards to notebooks, from circulars to disciplinary notes, from fascist youth organizations to the prevailing rhetoric of the time, up to those loose leaflets – compiled almost in a hurry – slipped from the report cards, in which the families of the students they self-certified theirs “not belonging to the Jewish race”.
Racism, the Italian one, flaunted in the magazine directed by Telesio Interlandi – The defense of the race – whose editorial secretary was Giorgio Almirante, to whom today some would like to dedicate streets and squares.
A racism that fortunately did not affect our city, but which left its mark in nearby San Giorgio su Legnano where Guglielmina Ottolenghi was forced to leave teaching at the local primary school due to her Jewish origins (here is our memory).
In the Breed manifesto it was asserted that “Jews are not of the Italian race”. Laws followed that progressively excluded Jews from the social life of the country, starting with the expulsion of teachers and students from schools of all levels. As Restelli recalled in his lesson: 79 principals and middle school teachers, 96 university teachers, 133 university assistants and 200 freelance teachers + 2,500 children from primary school and 4,000 from middle and high schools. In total, 6,500 students and around 700 teachers were expelled.
Gigi Marinoni
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