- Sharon Reichel, curator of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Holocaust (MEIS), and Josep Calvet, historian, will discuss the memory of the Holocaust throughout prisons converted into memorials.
- The conversation will take place at the former prison La Model in Barcelona on January 24 and will be moderated by Jordi Guixé, director of the EUROM.
- Organized in collaboration with Councillorship of Democratic Memory of the City Council of Barcelona in the framework of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2022.
Sharon Reichel will explain the case of the prison in Ferrara (Italy) which became the Museo Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah in 2017. Josep Calvet, who is part of the team of La Model museum project carried out by EUROM, will delve into how the future memorial space aims to reflect the memories of those who fled the Holocaust and were imprisoned there.
About the speakers
Sharon Reichel is an art historian specializing in Italian Jewish art and the history of the Jews of Italy. She is an expert in cataloging and management of cultural heritage, with direct experience in archive work. She has been working in the project of the Museo Nazionale dell’Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah since 2012.
Josep Calvet Bellera holds a Ph.D. in history and is a member researcher of the History, Heritage, and Documentation Service of the University of Lleida. He has devoted much of his research to studying the first years of the Franco regime in the Pyrenees and is known to recover the memory of those who fled through the Pyrenees during World War II. In this field, he has coordinated the project for the creation of the prison museum El Camí de la Llibertat inaugurated in 2007 in Sort, Catalonia. In recent times he has focused his research on the deportees to Nazi concentration camps.
Cover image: On the top are the galleries of the former prison of Ferrara, in use from 1912 to 1992. The bottom image shows the installation “The Garden that doesn’t exist”, one of the last exhibitions by Dani Karavan, displayed at the MEIS in 2018, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of racist laws. This site-specific project represents Karavan’s homage to Giorgio Bassani’s book The Garden of the Finzi Continis.
Related Publications
Report: Prisons turned into memorials: the case of the MEIS in Ferrara