Due detenuti triestini nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale: Voghera e Piazza

Abstract

This paper compares two books written by Jewish Triestine authors on their detention in World War II. Guido Voghera emigrated to British Palestine shortly before the war and was arrested as an enemy national and taken to the prison of Jaffa, together with other Italians. His Carcere di Giaffa (Pordenone 1985) is a frame story in the tradition of Boccaccio's Decameron but much shorter.
Bruno Piazza was a lawyer, who was imprisoned in the concentration camp of the Risiera di San Sabba in Triest and hence deported to Auschwitz. His extensive account of the camp reminds of Primo Levi's Is This a Man, that was written in the same period: immediately after the war. A unique description Piazza provided is that of the hours in the gas chamber waiting for the 'Schreiber' that should bring the deadly cyanide. As a political prisoner, Piazza was saved and able to narrate the horrible night he spent there. The book that had been finished at Piazza's death in 1946 was published only in 1956 and never became an editorial success. It has, however, much in common with Levi's work.