In 2018, the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah opened in the city of Ferrara, whose Jewish history is known to Americans primarily because of the 1971 film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, based on Giorgio Bassani’s novel of the same name. Created pursuant to an act of the Italian parliament, the museum was the result of a nearly eighteen-year discussion of where and how to create a memorial to the Holocaust. The result is as much about the history of Ferrara’s Jews as about their fate under fascism. Carlin Romano writes:
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More about: Holocaust, Italian Jewry, Jewish museums, Renaissance