Geografie della memoria. La Shoah tra centri catalizzatori e periferie sommerse

Abstract

The Vernichtungslagern, real places, but “humanly and ethically impossible to conceive” as defined by Georges Didi-Huberman,  have produced a centripetal force capable of conditioning and reshaping the role of any other element necessary for the creation of public discourse on the Holocaust. This essay aims to critically analyze the relationship between these sites and the human specimens found in anatomical collections used for educational purposes until a few decades ago, preserved by institutions that participated in medical experimentation on victims during the Nazi period and actively contributed to their deaths. 
Conceivable as submerged sites, carriers of unexpected hybrid memories that are certainly external to the official discourse, these findings challenge the institutional narrative and alter the geographical network of Holocaust memory, fragmenting it and  establishing complex and uncomfortable connections between the centres and peripheries they represent.