“Con lo sguardo di Nella” – “Looking with Nella’s eyes” Shoah commemoration theatre performance

 Written by Gregorio U., Gabriele T., Sebastiano V., Asia M., Angelica P.

Every year in our  school in February there is a show performed by students. They act and read stories of people who had lived during the Second World War and the Shoah.

On the first of February 2024 we went to the cinema and we watched this performance, named “Looking with Nella’s eyes”. At the beginning the actors got expelled from their school in Genoa, and they got deported to the concentration camp in Calvari, a small town in Fontanabuona in the province of Genoa. They lived in slums and life was really hard because they were prisoners and hardly got fed. After that they were taken to Milan and then to prison. Later they were deported to Auschwitz Birkenau from platform 21 which was the platform the trains left towards the concentration camps. 

When they arrived there they divided people: they tattooed a number on an arm to recognise them, they shaved their heads, they got dressed as prisoners and the weakest ones were taken to gas chambers and when they died they were burned. This is the first story we were told.

The second story is about Andra and Tati and their cousin Sergio, at the beginning Sergio said that they moved from Naples to Rjieka but there they were arrested and taken to San Sabba concentration camp. They were taken to milan where they found their grandma and they left to Auschwitz. When they arrived they were divided and their grandma was killed while Andra, Tati and Sergio were led to a kinderblock. Once the lady who looked after the children told Tatiana that one day someone will ask them whether  they wanted to see their parents again and they should have answered that they don’t. they were exchanged for twins and for this reason they survived.

The third story was about Liliana Segre who told that she was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13 but since she looked older, she was divided and went with the women and they cleaned the slums and worked. At the end there is a flashback about the first story of Nella’s life who died in gas chambers a month before her sixth birthday. 

In our opinion it was touchy and it is important in their life. By Gabriele T., Gregorio U., Sebastiano V., Angelica P. and their classmates