That morning of 1944 in the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen, in Lower Saxony, Vittorio Palmas, Sardinian from Perdasdefogu, on the orders of the Nazis stepped on the scales. The needle marked 37 kilos and he was saved: whoever weighed less than 35 was burned alive in the crematoria.
"I am alive for two kilos" is the sentence that Vittorio, who died two years ago at the age of almost 106, uttered many times in his very long life as he recounted that Monday morning as a deported to the Nazi concentration camp, sadly known for the events of Anne Frank, during the Second World War.
His story, taken from the novel "The acorn is a cherry" by Giacomo Mameli - winner of the Orsello Prize for literature in 2007 - has become a show entitled "Story of a thin man" that the Cultural Association Pane & Cioccolata will propose for the Remembrance Day on January 27, which will commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.
Fifteen performances that will be staged by the director-actor Paolo Floris in 13 centers of Sardinia. The show, proposed in recent years in Lazio, in Tuscany, at the Memorial of the Shoah in Milan, at the University of Malaga and at the Luiss in Rome, involves over 1,600 students between middle and high schools with the patronage of the municipalities of Nuoro, Dorgali, Orgosolo , Mamoiada, Oschiri, Perdasdefogu and Tortolì.
"I met Vittorio Palmas when he was 103 and I am happy to stage his story to make it known and to remember what the Second World War was - said the director Floris in the press conference in Nuoro - Zio Vittorio was a prisoner of war, an example of the Resistance that I was lucky enough to tell thanks to the book by Giacomo and the journey made with Ascanio Celestini who helped me write the piece that later became a show. For five years I have been proudly carrying it around Sardinia , for Italy and for the world and now after the pandemic we are also spreading it on streaming in hundreds of schools ".
"The island was the protagonist of the history of the liberation of Italy more than we know - explained the journalist writer Giacomo Mameli - In Sardinia there were 3,500 partisans and between 150 and 200 victims murdered by Nazis. Yet, in some respects, they are forgotten victims. I myself did not fully know that dark piece of World War II and I consider Uncle Vittorio my history professor. Paolo Floris brings the monologue of the show to the stage, which will be broadcast simultaneously in many schools of the Sardinia, and will make known the horrors of Nazism ".
This year the performance will be enriched by the Murales di Orgosolo tenor choir who translated into music the sonnet "Cantigu de soldadu mortu" written by the Sardinian poet Mario Pinna, former professor at the universities of Padua and Madrid.
The theatrical tour will start on January 19th in Tortolì and will end on February 2nd in Sassari. In the middle it will touch Lanusei, Oschiri, Buddusò, Nuoro, Dorgali, Mamoiada, Oristano, Orgosolo, Cagliari, Sant'Antioco, Calasetta and Muravera.
(Unioneonline / vl)
