Contemplating My Jewish identity During the 150th Anniversary Celebration of Jewish Community in Milan
I’ve visited countless Jewish enclaves and Holocaust memorials in the two years I’ve lived in Europe. Here, I carry my heritage like a dead weight across the continent, where I feel as though it’s my duty to discover the Jewish history of each city, especially in the communities that were once eradicated.
My identity as an Australian Jew—I’m Australian only because my grandparents were expelled from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—has guided my itinerary, bringing me from Rome’s Great Synagogue and the shadow-casting cement blocks of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, to Prague’s dense, unkempt Jewish cemetery. The clammy hand of history tightened its grip when my parents, who themselves carry the guilt of second generation survivors, visited me here in Italy. They even managed to tour the pinnacle of Catholicism, the Vatican, from a Jewish perspective. God bless them.