"I was lucky enough to assist in the small kitchen of the former psychiatric hospital Teatro Paolo Pini, Milan, the first performance of " Ausmerzen - life unworthy of be lived, " Marco Paolini, on live television on your La7 tonight, January 26. More than a fortune, I would say a gift. In a little over two hours of drama monologue Paolini
transfigured and made understandable in its immense a deep and painful history that even thought I knew well, that of the T4 project, code behind which lies the most incredible and removed never carried out the extermination of people with disabilities, by the Nazis in the years preceding the war.
I will treasure these emotions when 28 Friday, Memorial Day, 18 will lead to a conversation on the extermination of the disabled, in Sesto San Giovanni, in the space Mil, near Milan, an event that launched LEDH strongly backed by the League for the rights of persons with disabilities. It 'amazing how this year, finally, you are tearing the wall of silence surrounding this crime. We have written, drawing on many documents not disclosed during the year. Associations have spoken. But everything has always been incredibly muffled, concealed, removed, almost annoying.
Marco Paolini looks like he can do alone in a bare stage, behind two walls full of suits and poor clothes, remember the dead in hospitals chosen by the Nazi doctors to complete the industrial project "euthanasia". Paolini uses sheets of scattered notes on an old table, while a woman stood and scans of historical documents in German. On white overalls, hung on the wall, slide images of places and missing persons. The actor says, creates links between the events and eras, making connections that shake an eerie quiet and attentive audience. "The ideas need time to come true." Yeah. Time. The reading of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, which enhances the thinking on race, which is making headway in the United States. Yeah, not in Germany. In his country he'll calmly and methodically, in the years to come. La Belle Epoque, even before the cultural soil in which ferments in scientific thought, the belief that we can improve the genetic destiny of the people, for the good of humanity.
And then the crisis of '29, the economic depression. You begin to weigh the sacrifices families economically. It insinuates the idea that 3 and a half marks, the daily cost of a person who does not work, falls on the shoulders of all. And so it is important and feasible save by cutting unnecessary and unproductive lives. A swirl of numbers, figures, projects. A construction company with headquarters in Tiergarten Strasse in Berlin, at number 4. Here come Aktion T4. Will be at least 70 000 dead, the first lethal injection, then to gas, the first phase of the Nazi euthanasia program. 300 000 but only once at the end of the war. Psychiatric patients, deformed people, waste of a company that aims to breed pure. Remember, explain, tell. The word of scanned Paolini enters the heart and brain, takes your breath away. He himself expresses pain, fatigue, physical and moral, in a monologue that I hope will be seen by millions of viewers, and will be replicated in schools, theaters, maybe a movie, including a comedy next.
The fact is that without civil courage of Marco Paolini, which combines professional collaboration television Gad Lerner, one of the brothel, today we would not have such a powerful tool of meditation and universal and collective memory. Thank you, Pauline. "
