Liliana Segre at the Unveiling of the Stumbling Stone for Giuseppe Pagano

The recently appointed Senator for life Liliana Segre will attend a ceremony on Monday, 29 January at 12:30pm (via Sarfatti 25 hall), for the unveiling of a stumbling stone in memory of Giuseppe Pagano, the architect who designed the Bocconi building in via Sarfatti 25. The German artist Gunter Demnig has placed the stumbling stone in front of the building entrance.

The stumbling stones are a widespread work of art designed by Demnig in order to keep alive the memory of the victims of the Nazi extermination camps. The stones are in fact brass blocks with an engraving of the name and date of birth of the deportee, the place of deportation and the date of death, when known.

Giuseppe Pogatschnig, an Istrian Italian, participated in the First World War as an irredentist, later Italianizing his surname to Pagano. He entered the Second World War as a fascist, before joining the anti-fascist movement and going underground in 1943. Captured and tortured, he managed to flee a first time, but was once again held prisoner. Then, after a failed escape attempt, he was deported to the Mauthausen camp, where he died on 22 April 1945, in the Melk sub-camp.

As an architect, he graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and was one of the protagonists of Italian Rationalism. In addition to the Bocconi building, his works include Palazzo Gualino in Turin and the Institute of Physics at the University of Rome.