At the core of Le Case di Micòl lies a fundamental question: How can a broken life be found again?
Where do we look for the traces of everyday existence — the houses, the faces, the paths — of young Jewish women erased from history?
This question guided the work of the Ferrara Institute of Contemporary History, a key partner of the project, which developed and shared a rigorous research methodology with the students and teachers of the participating European film schools: ACT (Belgium), Warsaw Film School (Poland), Prague Film School (Czech Republic), and Blow-Up Academy (Italy).
A Methodology to Give Voices Back to Stories
The process began with a detailed mapping of houses that once belonged to Jewish families persecuted during the Shoah in Italy, Belgium, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
The goal: to identify a home, an address, a tangible place from which an authentic and documented story could emerge.
To achieve this, the Institute guided partners in building a methodological framework based on three key elements:
- Local historical context (racial laws, deportations, Jewish communities);
- Primary and secondary sources;
- Verification of information through archives, libraries, witnesses, and digital tools.
Each school then selected a figure — a Micòl — and began an investigation to restore her face, her voice, her language, and her memory.
The Sources: Where History Begins
During a training session held by the Institute on June 15, 2023, researchers presented the main investigative tools in great detail, including:
- Archival sources (municipal, cadastral, school, and registry archives);
- Memoir sources (diaries, letters, interviews, testimonies);
- Iconographic sources (family photos, identity documents, preserved objects);
- Digital and online resources, among them:
- Shoah Museum of Rome;
- Atlas of Nazi and Fascist Massacres in Italy;
- Yad Vashem (Israel);
- CDEC – Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center;
- JewishGen.org and Traces of Memory.
Equally important was the collaboration with local institutions, museums, and Jewish communities, which helped orient the research and validate its results.
An Interdisciplinary Inquiry
The methodology proposed by the Institute went beyond historiography.
It became an educational and interdisciplinary experience, combining:
- The study of historical documents;
- The writing of cinematic narratives;
- Civic reflection on the meaning and value of memory.
As the Institute emphasized, researching a “house” also means searching for the emotions that once inhabited it.
Every rediscovered place is not just an address — it is a narrative and emotional node, a point where history meets humanity.
From Data to Story
The research process produced concrete outcomes: each participating school identified a story and a house.
Every short film currently in production begins from that process — a creative act grounded in historical truth.
The shared methodology provided coherence across the entire project, making each path comparable despite the diversity of local contexts.
The work of the Institute was discreet yet decisive: it traced the way forward, provided expertise, and showed that doing history means restoring complexity — and responsibility.
A Legacy for the Future
The collected documentation and identified traces will form a shared archive, designed to live well beyond the end of the project.
For the students involved, this methodology has been not only a research tool but also a lesson in method, ethics, and memory.
“The search for truth is the first step toward restoring dignity to the victims and awareness to the living.”
— Ferrara Institute of Contemporary History