When the Jews arrived in Porto Conte to escape the Nazi concentration camps: an exhibition not to forget
A story unknown to many, but which testifies to a human solidarity that even in Sardinia has challenged time and regimes, giving a little light in the dark period of the Fascist period
The evocative exhibition “Baggage pending - Ausstehendes Gepäck. Jews in transit from the Porto Conte seaplane base ”, scheduled for Saturday 5 February in Alghero, in the exhibition space of the atelier in via Carlo Alberto 86.
The exhibition, already hosted in December by Valentina Piredda-Sardinia in the CULT Gallery in Alghero, had received great attention and desire for further study from the public and had had the honor of arousing the interest of Senator Liliana Segre.
“Luggage in suspension” traces, in fact, a story still unknown to most and testifies to a human solidarity that even in Sardinia, in Alghero, has challenged time and regimes, giving a little light in the dark period of the Fascist period.
It starts with the discovery of a travel case from the 1930s containing some garments that presumably belonged to a Jewish family, including a coat on whose buttons the Star of David was embroidered. This baggage rested for years in a cellar in the historic center of Alghero, then in the stable of a horse in the countryside. Nothing is known about the family to which he belonged: did they still manage to escape, in a hurry and without being able to recover the cash?
A discovery that is intertwined with the stories of the staff who headed the Idroscalo of Porto Conte and which supports the thesis according to which, at the end of the Thirties, some flights would have given the possibility to families of Jewish origin to escape from Nazi persecution. These were mostly groups of people from Budapest and Vienna with transit to Rome who, after an indispensable Sardinian stop in the Porto Conte seaplane base, reached Barcelona and then landed in South America from Portugal with the Pan American transoceanic Clippers.
The recovery of the case motivated the scholar Massimiliano Fois and the artist and curator Valentina Piredda-Sardinia to investigate the baggage attributable to Jewish families in transit, "pending" baggage, precisely, since it was destined to be recovered during a stage of the escape from Nazi persecutions and which could still lie forgotten in the territory of Alghero.
The exhibition will be open on Fridays from 16:30 to 19:30 and on Saturdays from 11 to 13:00
and from 16:30 to 19:30, or by reservation.
The review is promoted by the Municipality of Alghero and the Alghero Foundation on the occasion of the celebrations for the Day of Remembrance.
(Unioneonline / vl)
