Future Memories: Lotoro's journey in search of music written in concentration camps continues in Poland

Francesco Lotoro al pianoforte nella casa che fu di he fu Rudolf Höß, ad Auschwitz

Francesco Lotoro 's journey in search of music composed in concentration camps and other places of civilian and military captivity around the world continues in Poland . The project "Future Memories. Lotoro's Journey to Save the Lost Music ," of which this journey is also part, is promoted by the Fondazione Istituto di Letteratura Musicale Concentrazionaria ETS and supported by the Claims Conference (New York), the Puglia Region, the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe (London), the Righteous Persons Foundation (Los Angeles), and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (Paris) . The journey was undertaken together with Donatella Altieri, head of management of the ILMC Foundation.

The first objective of the trip was to meet Mark Wallace , former US Ambassador to the UN and now CEO of the Counter Extremism Project , an American foundation that has acquired the former lodgings of Rudolf Höß (Auschwitz commandant) for a cultural project that will be developed in the coming years . The meeting provided an opportunity to delve deeper into the logistics of the camp and (an act of great symbolic value) to play, on a piano allocated for the occasion in the same lodgings as Rudolf Höß, piano music written in Auschwitz I on the occasion of Holocaust International Remembrance Day.

In the photos: Francesco Lotoro with Mark Wallace and at the piano in Rudolf Höß's former quarters in Auschwitz

The journey continued to Krakow ; Donatella Altieri then returned to Italy, while Lotoro continued on to Warsaw, where it was possible to update himself on the latest publications on the music produced in the Warsaw Ghetto and on the musicians who were involved in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.