Rome’s shame: Erasing memory to appease homeowners

Rome has always been a city of grand monuments, towering basilicas, and exquisite ruins. And now, in Via Alessandro Torlonia, we have a brand-new addition to its architectural heritage: the edifice of moral cowardice. It comes with all the usual trimmings—self-interest disguised as civic concern, historical amnesia as a design feature, and a sturdy foundation of shame. The recent request to relocate the Shoah Museum is not about security, heritage, or even common sense. It is, quite simply, about making the memory of six million dead just a little less visible, a little more palatable, and preferably someone else’s problem. Because nothing says ‘never forget’ quite like ‘could you remember elsewhere?’

The grotesque spectacle unfolding in Rome, where a group of aggrieved residents has formally petitioned Mayor Roberto Gualtieri to relocate the site of the Shoah Museum away from their neighborhood, is an unvarnished display of craven appeasement dressed up as public responsibility. That these residents, emboldened by their own self-importance, dare to frame their objections as a matter of security rather than what they plainly are—a  crude, shameful attempt to erase history from their pristine streets—is an indictment of a city that has yet to fully come to terms with its past.

The claim, made with staggering chutzpah, is that the museum’s presence will invite acts of violence and intimidation, thereby endangering local residents. It takes a perverse degree of self-regard to argue that the real problem is not the bigots and vandals who desecrate the memory of Holocaust victims, but the very monument intended to honor them. This logic—if it can be called that—suggests that the appropriate response to intolerance is to accommodate it, that the way to deal with threats is to capitulate. One shudders to imagine the reaction were such an argument applied to any other museum, any other memorial, any other place of historical reckoning.

Counsel to these homeowners, the inaptly named Rosa Sciatta Ferri, has issued a statement that would be amusing in its pomposity were it not so repugnant in its implications. She invokes constitutional protections, solemnly intoning the need to safeguard public safety, as though the construction of a Holocaust memorial were tantamount to erecting a munitions depot. The assertion that the ‘moment historical and geopolitical’ following October 7, 2023, necessitates a reconsideration of the museum’s location is particularly risible. What it truly reveals is the barely concealed belief that Jewish memory—when inconvenient—should be hidden away, out of sight and out of mind.

Rome, a city that has long prided itself on its cultural and historical riches, now risks disgracing itself before the world. That the Shoah Museum should have to fight for its rightful place in the very capital of a nation complicit in the persecution and deportation of its Jewish citizens is a scandal of the highest order. One might have hoped that, in the 21st century, Rome would welcome the opportunity to honor the victims of its past sins, rather than cowering behind the feeble excuse that doing so might attract the ire of those who would prefer such history be forgotten.

Mayor Gualtieri has a clear choice before him. He can indulge the prejudices of a few anxious residents who tremble at the thought of their property values being affected by the presence of a Holocaust memorial, or he can reaffirm Rome’s commitment to historical truth and moral clarity. If he chooses the former, he should at least have the decency to be honest about it: don’t call it a ‘relocation.’ Call it what it is—Rome’s latest attempt to tidy history away like an inconvenient piece of antique furniture, best kept in storage, out of sight and safely forgotten.