CDEC: “Jews of Rhodes. Eclipse of a Community 1944-2024” Monument Project

The Project:

The sun is one of the protagonists of the Rhodesli’s memories, it is the background and illuminates their stories.

With discrimination, persecution and finally deportation by fascists and Nazis, a dark shadow falls over the Jewish community of Rhodes and Kos (Kos).

Hence the concept of eclipse, a metaphor for a Jewish presence erased in a few hours but which, unlike other communities, survives elsewhere, inside, and outside Rhodes, beyond the Shoah, in the traditions and memory of a community now distributed in different countries of the world.

The project is designed precisely on this widespread character: in the institutes involved, in an attempt to go beyond linguistic boundaries and to open a direct channel with the descendants and with anyone who can contribute with documents and memories to research that is far from over.

Through a physical installation and the digital portal, both fully accessible in Italian and English, the project aims at a visual representation, declined in different languages, of the results of the CDEC Foundation’s many years of research on published and unpublished sources: documents, photographs, audiovisuals, memoirs from the Foundation’s historical archives and from the most important national and international archives.

The aim is to reconstruct the identity of each of the 1,817 deportees, giving each of them their name, date and place of birth, the name of their father and mother.

In the temporary installation, open in Milan from 10 May to 2 September 2024, this operation is also symbolically entrusted to visitors called upon to complete a history and memory that would otherwise be blurred in their contours and relevance in our present.

Inside and outside the physical space of the installation, the digital portal offers tools and content to explore this story from different perspectives.

For more info, visit the Monument’s website