by Nicoletta L. Bagliano
Don’t forget the tragedy of the Holocaust It also means giving voice to small, unknown stories, of women full of courage, who are still a strong warning and a message of hope for the generations present and future. This is one Female historyof women voted for God, to motherhood – also adoptive – and to the testimony. Susanna is one of the Memory women.
Who was Susanna?
A Jewish girl who escaped the Nazi persecutions because it is entrusted by the parents to the care of the Franciscan nuns of a convent in Florence, whose life is narrated in show Mom and suora suora dadstaged at the Camilleri Theater in Santa Fiora (Grosseto) on February 2nd. The idea of telling her came to Francesco Surianoplaywright and theatrical director, who met Susanna more than thirty years ago. It was called Susanna Silberstein Trevisani in Ceccherini: “None of these surnames must be left out,” says Francesco Suriano, “because they indicate all the people who have allowed them to remain alive”. Let’s talk about the parents (Walter and Edith Silberstein) who saved her from the horror of the extermination camps by entrusting it to the Florentine religious; by Libera Trevisani, the woman who will adopt her as soon as she left the convent and who will be her mother for the rest of life; by Pier Vittorio Ceccherini, the man who will marry her and from whom he will have two children, Tullio and Francesca.
The mockery, only in death
«Susanna is died in 2020 During Lockdown, in the full pandemic», Says the director,”without the possibility of having a funeral In the’Last farewell of his children and her husband. This sad circumstance made me think: it was as if fate replied the solitude of death, as that of the his family – which took place 77 years earlier – exterminated in the Auschwitz fieldfar from everyone, without tears or prayers ». Nobody was saved: the parents, his sister Elena and his brother Riccardo, grandparents, uncles, nobody is back.
Mom and suora suora dad
Only Susanna is escaped the horror of the Shoahthanks to the most painful and loving gesture that a parent can do: ask someone else to look after his child in his place. This task was entrusted to the nuns of the order of the poor daughters of the sacred stigmata of San Francesco d’Assisi, called “stigmatine”, A group of religious from a Florentine convent that welcomed the little girl of just over a year and took care of her for three years. In the Franciscan walls Susanna has been nourished, cradled and cared for sheltered from persecutions and nuns have become his family, each with a precise role: Sister Cesarina was a nun motherWhile Sister Federica was a suora babbo. Then there were the zie nuns and the mother Superior Sister Teresa: in them Susanna finds new reference points that will be the primary emotional nucleus for its growth.
Adoption
At four years the little girl is adopted by Libera Trevisani (widow of the mathematician Tullio Levi Civita), with the support of his friend Marcella Trevesrepresentative of the Delasem of Florence, the Jewish association that dealt with the adoptions of children who survived the Holocaust. The adoptive mother and the “aunt” are the new female combination that will accompany Susanna in the years to come, until the choice to give birth to a family.
The strength of women
Susanna said: “I only had women who defended me, donated affection, lethal, supported, cradled, loved, rejoicing: free … Edith … Marcella … Elena … Lea … Cornelia … Leonida … mother superior … mother’s nun … sue dad … Angelica … Francesca “: as pearls of an emotional necklace the female figures of Susanna’s life are all here, all important, all decisive in the various stages of a difficult and tormented existence, but at the same time joyful and full.
A woman helped by women that, each in its own way, they saved her, not one but many times: thanks to their courage and their strength Susanna has been able to grow, study, build a family, dedicate themselves to others and to find herself and its own Origins. This moment came after the birth of her daughter Francesca, when suddenly the black hole of the past re -emerged in memory and conducted her on a long research path, with the support of her husband Pier Vittorio. The testimonies collected and the memories emerged on this trip were a precious baggage for Suriano, author and director of the show.
The theatrical show
The piece that is staged at the Camilleri theater of Santa Fiora He is a monologue, where the actress Arianna Ninchi interprets all the roles, passing from Susanna (girl, girl and then adult) to the nuns of the convent to the other women who were part of her life: all with natural skill, making use of simple details (a handkerchief in the lead, a gesture, L ‘dialectal inflection) to give voice to different people. Past and present coexist on stage through flashbacks with dramatic deportation stories, video inserts and off items, in addition to the notes of the Violinist Haim Fabrizio Cipriani.
Mom and suora suora dad the 2-3 February at the Camilleri Theater in Santa Fiora (Grosseto) e On 8 May at the Le Laudi Theater in Florence. Text and direction by Francesco Suriano, interpreter Arianna Ninchi.
In the photo of Guido Laudani, Arianna Ninchi during the tests.
