Data sheet
Name: Monument for the Israelite Martyrs of Nazism
Location: expansion, no. 16-17-18
Author: Manfredo d’Urbino (architect)
Construction date: 1947
The monument was designed in 1947 by architect Manfredo d’Urbino, commissioned by the Jewish Community of Milan and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, presided over by Raffaele Cantoni. It consists of a large menorah made of Vallestrona marble with the flame of freedom at its center. Surrounding it, there are twelve memorial plaques with the names of the martyrs, along with their birth and death dates, and the circumstances of their deaths.
On both sides of the monument is the following inscription, in Italian and Hebrew: “The Jews of Italy remind the world of six million innocent brothers brutally murdered and pass on to future generations, in the memory of those buried here, an example of the centuries-old martyrdom endured by the people of Israel for justice, freedom, and human brotherhood. July 13, 1947.” The monument contains ashes brought from Dachau.
The number of plaques evokes the twelve tribes of Israel, and all those commemorated died in Italy. Among them are: Dora Pisetzsky Luzzatti (1892-1945), killed at the Bolzano concentration camp; Odoardo Segrè (1917-1945), who escaped from a deportation train to fight for liberation; Wilhelm Weinberg (1893-1944), who committed suicide in San Vittore Prison in Milan to avoid deportation; Viviano Borcioni (1926-1944), a partisan who was ambushed and killed during raids at Cairo Montenotte in November 1944; Angelo Finzi (1910-1945), a member of the Justice and Freedom resistance movement, who was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and killed in Via Airaghi in Milan; Giacomo Mendes (1897-1945), a partisan, who died in combat with others in Via Viviani 12 in Milan on April 25, 1945; Gilberto Coen (1920-1944), who returned from Switzerland to fight as a paratrooper with the Allies and took part in the liberation of Florence; Odoardo della Torre (1894-1944), who was killed in the Ardeatine Caves; Ester Botton in Mosseri (1891-1943) from Thessaloniki, killed and thrown into Lake Maggiore by Nazis in Meina; Lazar Araf (1905-1943), originally from Bulgaria, killed in the Milan synagogue on November 8, 1943, while attempting to escape from the Nazis; Israel Epstein (1914-1946), a member of the Irgun, who was killed by a police officer in 1946 while attempting to escape after an attack on the British embassy in Rome; Giorgio Rath (1901-1944) from Poland, who was killed in San Vittore Prison during Nazi interrogations.
