Works for the Foundation Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center (CDEC), Italy

Involved in EHRI since May 2015

I received my degree in Contemporary history at the Università Statale
of Milan. My thesis concerned the Italian Zionists and the Italian
diplomats dealing with the question of the future of Palestine during
the First World War.

My PhD thesis was in Political science and concerned with the
relations between the EEC and the State of Israel and the construction
of the “image” of Israel by the European Institutions from 1957 to 1973.

For almost ten years I was involved in the activities of the Chair of Contemporary History at the Università Statale in Milan and, at the same time, with the Commission of History of International Relations.

CDEC

Then,
I “switched” to archival work: I received a master’s degree in Records
management, document flows and electronic records at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
in Milan. I worked as an archivist at the Italian Institute for
International Political Studies in Milan first and then at the
Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC)
where I am since 2005. Here I got closer to the topics related to the
history of the Holocaust in Italy , which is the main area of research
of the CDEC Foundation.

In the last three years, leading the works for the integration of
the CDEC’s librarian and archival resources and for the “Open Memory
Project” in particular, (concerning the LOD publication of the Names of
the Victims of the Holocaust in Italy), I have felt fascinated by
topics related to digital history, the perspectives that big data and
new technologies are opening up for historical scholars. I’d like to go
deepen my knowledge of this field

EHRI-project

I was aware
of the EHRI project and its activities from the start, in 2010, but I
became directly involved with it in 2013 when I attended the meeting in
Berlin “Public History of the Holocaust”. On that occasion I met some
people already involved in EHRI and I had the opportunity to discuss
with them the work they were doing. In 2014 when I knew that a new phase
of the EHRI project was in process, I took some steps with Conny
Kristel asking if there were any possibilities for my institute to take
part in EHRI, the second phase. The answer was positive and the welcome
warm hearted.

Role in the project

I am directly involved in the work of five EHRI Work Packages:
2, 3, 6, 9 and 11; so my role changes according to the tasks of each
Work Package. The director of the CDEC Foundation, Michele Sarfatti,
helps me with some of them, especially with Work Package 9 concerning a
survey of Italian institutions that hold Holocaust related collections.

What interests me is the main idea behind the EHRI project: the
building of a place (the Research Infrastructure) devoted to sharing
knowledge about the Holocaust. This means that information can come from
the institutions that hold collections, but also from scholars involved
in researches about the Holocaust.

On a more detailed level, I find it extremely interesting, as
well as very useful, to create a thesaurus about the Holocaust. As the
retrieval of resources is one of the main needs of the users of the web,
this thesaurus represents, in my opinion, one of the crucial points
(and a demanding one, as well) of our work. I think that, when it is
finished, it will be a turning-point, and we will have a tool that will
be greatly appreciated also by the wider community of archivists and
librarians dealing with materials concerning the Holocaust.