Remembrance day

 

Today is my birthday.
I guess this is the remembrance day also out of Italy. Of course in the whole world, it does not remember my birthday but the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

So the week before my birthday all TV channels broadcast programs on the Shoah. I hate the word "holocaust", this word makes it seem like it's a spontaneous sacrifice and not planned extermination.

Despite the sadness exerted by the vision of many TV programs, I arrive at this day with a light heart.

A few years ago, I was always very sad on my birthday.
Now no more, maybe the time passing, the years more... I do not know.

Perhaps ( I do not sure when I have to use "maybe" or "perhaps" so I use both) watching people who suffered really much helps me to be not sad on my birthday.

I have been in a boarding school for 6 to 13 years. When I was twelve or thirteen years old I read a lot of books. I read every book that I had found.

Among those books, there were, for instance, Diario di Anne Frank, L'atomica su Hiroshima, Storia della Luftwaffe, so since I was a child I have known a lot of things about the second mondial war and war crimes. I read about bombing of Dresden before knowing Kurt Vonnegut or the V-2s launched on London and parents who sent their children away from the city and the bombings.

I knew also Primo Levi's books when I was still a little boy.

I am a graphic designer and I have a vivid imagination so when I watch movies or documentaries about the Shoah I do not need to effort to feel the suffering of Jewish deportees.

In Italian, I would have written something like that.

Oggi è il mio compleanno.
Immagino che questo sia il giorno della memoria anche fuori dall'Italia. Ovviamente tutto il mondo non ricorda il mio compleanno ma la liberazione del campo di concentramento di Auschwitz.

La settimana prima del mio compleanno tutti i canali televisivi trasmettono programmi sulla Shoah. Odio la parola "olocausto", questa parola fa sembrare che sia un sacrificio spontaneo e non uno sterminio pianificato.

Nonostante la tristezza esercitata dalla visione di tanti programmi televisivi, arrivo a questo giorno con il cuore leggero.

Alcuni anni fa, ero sempre molto triste per il mio compleanno. Adesso non più, forse il tempo che passa, gli anni in più... non lo so.

Forse (non sono sicuro di quando devo usare "maybe" o "perhaps" quindi uso entrambi) guardare le persone che hanno sofferto davvero tanto mi aiuta a non essere triste per il mio compleanno.

Sono stato in un collegio da 6 a 13 anni. Quando avevo dodici o tredici anni leggevo molti libri. Ho letto tutti i libri che trovavo.

Tra quei libri c'erano, ad esempio, Diario di Anne Frank, L'atomica su Hiroshima, La storia della Luftwaffe, quindi fin da bambino ho conosciuto molte cose sulla seconda guerra mondiale e sui crimini di guerra. Ho letto dei bombardamenti su Dresda prima di conoscere Kurt Vonnegut o i V-2 lanciati su Londra e genitori che nabdavano via i loro figli dalla città e dai bombardamenti.

Ho conosciuto anche i libri di Primo Levi quando ero ancora un ragazzino.

Sono un grafico e ho una fervida immaginazione, quindi quando guardo film o documentari sulla Shoa non ho bisogno di sforzarmi per sentire la sofferenza dei deportati ebrei.

The image is "Holocaust-Mahnmal Berlin" by Andrea & Stefan is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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