With deep sadness we share the news of the sudden death of Daniel Gorini at Massachusetts General Hospital on Friday 28 of June 2019, due to complications related to cancer. Radhika his wife was at his side as she did during his ten-year journey with cancer.

Daniel was the son of Lugi Gorini and Annamaria Torriani who dedicated their utmost energy to the House of The Children of Selvino who survived the Holocaust.

We are very moved by Daniel’s death.
We knew of his illness. In one of his last letters he had written: “My health is not very good right now – a bit of a low point in a long history of cancer ups and downs…”

His sincerity and frankness, his freedom of ideas, his aspirations and dreams will always accompany us.
We enjoyed his friendship and his thoughts. He shared a piece of his life and his affections, his family and his professional research with us.
We are grateful to him for this and for the story he shared with us about his parents and their involvement with the House of the Children Of Selvino.

We will carefully preserve these memories, as a testimony of his friendship, as a well his ideas of humanity and solidarity. His ideas of peace and love in which human culture presides, in varied art manifestations, as traces of man’s journey towards progress which is intelligence, knowledge, and the need for improvement, in dialogue with eternity.
We would like to remember Daniel exploring unknown paths, in search of the depths of man, hidden in stones, roofs, chimneys, spiers, materials, colors and artifacts that are usually considered to be of little significance.
This is why dear Daniel you will be missed.

A last hug from your friends from Italy

חברים יקרים,

בצער רב ובעצב עמוק אנו חולקים את הידיעה על מותו של דניאל גורני. דן נפטר לפתע מסיבוכים הקשורים למחלת הסרטן, בבית החולים הכללי של מסצ’וסטס ביום שישי ה -28 ביוני 2019. רדהיקה (אשתו) היתה לצדו כפי שהיא נמצאה בכל פרק ממסעו בן העשור עם הסרטן. ביקור קליני חשף אי ספיקת כליות חריפה בשתי הכליות וכתוצאה מכך אושפז דחוף ומיידית,  אך נפטר תוך שבוע.

כחברת נפש בחייו ושותפה בטיפולו, רדהיקה מתמודדת  כעת עם עוקץ האובדן הזה.
היא הביעה את משאלתה בצורך למרחב אישי במהלך תקופה קשה זו. אמנם היא מעריכה מאוד את הרצון של כולם לעזור, אך בשלב זה ביקשה שלא לבקר אותה ולא לשלוח פרחים או מזון .
במקום זאת, הערות , מכתבים וכרטיסי ניחומים שישלחו בדואר יהיו מוערכים הרבה יותר מאשר שיחות או הודעות במייל.
זה יאפשר את הפרטיות שלה להקדיש למילים ולמחשבות שלך בעת שהיא מפנימה ומעכלת את התהליכים העמוקים  בתקופה קשה זאת. סבלנותך תוערך כיוון שזה ייקח לה  עוד זמן.

דן היה בעל נפש יוצאת דופן ותוססת. הוא חיבק את החיים במלוא הכנות; התבוננות, עבודה ויצירה עם תשוקה ועם אינטלקט, ללא העמדת פנים או סנטימנטליות מזדמנת. האנרגיה חסרת המנוח שלו  יחד עם מרחב כישרונותיו היו מדהימים.
חוש ההומור שלו ונאמנותו העזה לעיקרון הקסימו ונגעו בכולנו.

במועד מאוחר יותר, תינתן הזדמנות להתארגן ולחלוק את הסיפורים הרבים על חייו המדהימים, כזיכרון וכדרך ניחומים.

בכנות,
דון

דונלד קנר
בשם רדיקה בגאי


Luigi Gorini e Annamaria Torriani

Luigi Gorini and Annamaria Torriani

We want to remember Danel Gorini with his words, with the letter published by “Una Città” magazine in May 2014, pp. 44-45, in which he criticized Zionism (perhaps in an excessive and severe way), recalled the universal values of acceptance and solidarity against racism, nationalism and factiousness, in the name of brotherhood and diversity, in the name of his parents, Luigi and Annamaria, who they participated in the Italian Resistance and so they pledged to shelter the orphans who survived the Nazi crimes, so that the memory of the House of Children of Selvino is preserved.

Letter from Daniel Gorini: “THE ISSUES OF SCIESOPOLI”

My parents Luigi Gorini and Annamaria Torriani participated in the Italian Resistance in the thirties and forties. After the war they worked in Sciesopoli, Selvino (Bergamo), helping to save Jewish children orphaned by Nazi extermination. I write about the legacy of what they and their colleagues did there.
I learned recently that the building called Sciesopoli is at risk of being lost due to developments in local construction. If this happens, the memory of humanitarian work done there will be lost. It is important that Sciesopoli is preserved and that its history lives for posterity as a memory of a generous human activity, of which there is always so much need in our world. The history of Sciesopoli is a heritage of the Italian Resistance against totalitarianism, racism and militarism. This is why I propose a statute for a museum in Sciesopoli, a mission for an institution of wide and lasting value.
But there is also a paradox in the history of Sciesopoli. The exemplary goodwill to save refugee children in Selvino was essentially a Zionist project. This aspect of Sciesopoli generates a problematic scenario for me. It is clear that the local action of caring for these children was admirable: it was imperative. The Zionists who participated were good people who became friends for the life of my parents.
But I have radical disagreements with Zionism. It seems clear to me that Zionism is not a concept that somehow deteriorated when it ended up in the hands of those who would later distort it. Zionism, since its beginnings in the nineties of the nineteenth century, has been a claim of a lost homeland, a claim based on the reactionary populism of “blood and soil”. Its justifications are based on racial and religious grounds. Since its first formulation, the plan called for the removal of the population already present in Palestine, a people considered to be inferior on the racial level and functionally insignificant.
Zionism was immediately a militarized program to conquer the territory. As such it was already a right-wing project, such as to impose racial-religious requirements and descendants for citizenship. In its essence, Zionism has always been a colonial target. This has always been clear: it was openly discussed well before the Second World War, and many leftist voices among the Jews opposed it from the beginning. Clearly, the story was complicated, and remained so. Some Zionists were known socialists, others were active anti-fascists and would have been Luigi’s companions in the struggles of the thirties and forties. Nevertheless, the intrinsic realities of the situation in Palestine seem clear since the pre-existing population was excluded and marginalized. Zionism has never been better than its historical nemesis, anti-Semitism and radical Islamism: they all belong to the same species. The deplorable apartheid policies and actions of the State of Israel come directly from the original ethos of Zionism.
Because of this paradox I cannot take sides with any of the particular groups that try to preserve Sciesopoli. I think my ideas are very different from theirs. For this reason I write as an independent. I want to present a positive way of supporting the preservation of Sciesopoli and, at the same time, openly declare my views on subsequent events in the Middle East. It is a difficult problem for me to deal with, but there are only two choices: coping with the paradox or moving away from the legacy of Sciesopoli.
I propose that Sciesopoli be remembered in an open and active way, founding a museum that lives in the present while showing the history of Sciesopoli. The museum should be dedicated to similar examples of generosity in the face of injustice.
These examples, both current and historical, should be taken from all over the world, and should be chosen without political, racial or religious bias. The exhibitions should change constantly. With this mission Sciesopoli can become an institution of ever-present value and permanent significance. Otherwise, the project would risk becoming simply another umlaust memorial: a plaque, a story and a list of names.
Sciesopoli is a story that teaches us how to act to improve the conditions of those around us. The least we can do is think critically, open our minds and challenge our fellow men. And we must be aware that specific situations require specific actions, we cannot expect the principles to be universally applicable. Selvino’s story illustrates this: it is useful to do small things with good will, but it is also imperative to see clearly the specificity of local conditions in a wider world view. Positive action in a defined scenario cannot be extended directly to other conditions. This becomes evident when we see the humanitarian work that was done in Sciesopoli together with the Zionist project that was simultaneously carried out in Palestine.
The fascist regime had built Sciesopoli as the site of a training camp for the fascist youth (the building itself is an interesting example of the modernist aesthetic that was adopted by the fascists before they, like the Soviets, abandoned that vision for a mole – classicism best suited to their disappointments and their propaganda). At the end of the war the Italian Resistance took control of that property. My father Luigi was a central figure in the new function of Sciesopoli. Together with others he worked to make Sciesopoli a refuge for the wandering orphan children, who had survived the Nazi crimes. Those children were hosted, educated and generally rehabilitated with loving care. Being Jews, they were eventually transferred to the Middle East, in the British mandate of Palestine.
Selvino’s events were not a fairy tale; they were a true story of suffering and redemption. And the real stories, unlike fairy tales, are complicated. Sciesopoli’s good work was accomplished only with the activity of the Zionists: they were a force for good in that local situation. However, the good done in Selvino did not magically move to Palestine as in the end of a fable, on the contrary, an exclusionary policy was already in place there, the beginning of what would later become an ethnic cleansing. For this reason the legacy of Sciesopoli, and also that of the Italian Resistance, must not be merged with the specific history of Israel. It would really be a disaster if this were to happen because the two events are substantially in contradiction.
Israel, the nation-state, is a legacy of European colonialism. It was invented by the winning European nations that had to liquidate their colonies. In this sense Israel was little different from their arbitrary carving out of Africa. The cycles of factional and violence struggles that followed continue to this day. Ultimately, the actions of the State of Israel have consistently proven contrary to the basic concepts of inclusion, equality and cultural diversity; while Luigi and Annamaria have always fought for these concepts. It seems strange that they apparently justified Israel in this regard. However, I believe my parents would have done the same thing in Sciesopoli if the children had been, instead of Jews, of any other oppressed group. I imagine they acted out of a specific need, at a particular time, regardless of race or religion. 

ricordo nel 1997 del cinquantesimoThere are obviously contradictions in the history of Selvino, but we can extract a positive solution by celebrating the good and supporting acts of generosity. More important is to highlight that generosity and wickedness are universal. No race or religion is without generosity, but all are certainly capable of wickedness.
I strongly wish that Sciesopoli be preserved and that its history will become educational for everyone. I also want the legacy to remain of all the care taken in the world, without prejudice to race or religion, by people caught up in the endless drama of conflicts, which seems to be such a constitutive condition of humanity.
The legacy of Sciesopoli does not particularly concern Jews or Judaism, and certainly not the State of Israel. These were, in those circumstances, actors of the drama, but the core of the spirit of action was for a revival of the abjection of Fascism. It was a spirit that transcends partisanship.
If Sciesopoli becomes a museum its statute should refer explicitly to the universality of suffering and care of it, without preferences of races or religions; should be a beacon for inclusion and diversity. And in this spirit the museum should openly expose the current apartheid policies of the State of Israel. If the organizers have the courage and self-confidence to do this, they will build an exemplary memorial of the good deeds that have been done there.
A museum in Sciesopoli should be magnanimous and open. It should become an institution that supports and makes known the many struggles that continue everywhere in the world against repression, racism, exclusion and militarism.
It should be a living thing, centered on current events in the spirit of what happened in Selvino in 1947. This openness and timeliness is the best hope for building an esteemed and respected institution. The museum of Sciesopoli, like my father Luigi, must be honest, courageous and always tell the truth in power. And like my mother Annamaria, she should have an open and generous heart. Like them, it will not be perfect, but it can work for generosity, diversity and brotherhood.


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