The Memoriale della Shoah, a new Holocaust memorial, opened this summer under the Stazione Centrale (Central Train Station) in Milan. It requires our attention: not just inherently, because the subject is so important, but architecturally, because of the skill of the architects in finding compelling ways to bring this terrible period alive. The design is by Morpurgo de Curtis, a partnership founded in 2006 in Milan with a varied portfolio of housing, exhibition, and interior design. Guido Morpurgo previously worked for Vittorio Gregotti, Annalisa de Curtis for Umberto Riva.
Few passing through the Stazione Centrale (1912–31) know that underneath is an additional set of tracks used by the Italian postal service, but long abandoned. There, 80 years ago, Jews, Romani people, and enemies of the Nazi occupiers were sent north in boxcars to extermination and internment camps. Forced in through the postal entrance, they climbed into bare, unheated cars that were then shunted onto a hydraulic elevator and brought up to the main level, alongside trains bound for the rest of Italy. In all, approximately 1,200 Jews were sent from this spot north in 15 convoys between 1943 and 1945. Today this is the site of the Memoriale della Shoah.
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