Bergamo Oct 30 (Una): The Italian city that suffered the brunt of the first deadly wave of COVID-19 is dedicating a living memorial to the pandemic that died: a grove of trees, producing oxygen in a park opposite the hospital where many died The Associated Press (AP) reported unable to breathe
Bergamo, in northern Italy, is among the many communities around the world that have dedicated memorials to commemorating lives lost in an epidemic approaching the gruesome threshold of 5 million confirmed deaths.
Some are drawn from artists’ ideas or proposals by civic groups, but others are spontaneous displays of grief and frustration. Everywhere, the task of creating mass memorials is fraught with peril, as the epidemic is far from defeated and the new dead are still grieving.
Commemorative flags, hearts and ribbons: These simple objects were dedicated to the victims of the virus, and represent the lives lost in eye-catching memorials from London to Washington, D.C., and Brazil to South Africa.
The collective impact of white flags covering 20 acres on the National Mall in the US capital has been staggering, accounting for the more than 740,000 Americans killed by COVID-19, the highest official national death toll in the world.
One honored 80-year-old Carrie Alexander Washington of South Carolina, who was vaccinated and contracted the virus while still working as a clinical psychiatrist in March. His 6-year-old granddaughter Izzy collapsed in grief when she found the “Daddy” flag – a moment captured by a photographer and shared on Twitter.
“Families like mine, we still grieve,” said Washington’s daughter, Tanya, who traveled from Atlanta to see the memorial. “It was important to witness this honor being given to them. It gave a voice to all our loved ones who were lost.”
Likewise, a memorial wall in London conveys the scale of the loss, with pink and red hearts painted by bereaved loved ones on a wall along the Thames. Walking along the memorial without stopping to read the names and inscriptions takes a full nine minutes. Hearts account for more than 140,000 coronavirus deaths in Britain, the second highest toll in Europe after Russia; Like anywhere else in the world, the actual number is estimated to be much higher: 160,000.
“It shocks people,” said Fran Hall, a spokeswoman for COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. She lost her husband, Steve Meade, in September 2020, one day before his 66th birthday. “Every time we’re here, people stop and talk to us, often burst into tears as they walk, and thank us.”
In the Brazilian capital, relatives of Covid-19 victims laid thousands of white flags in front of the Brazilian Congress in one emotional day with the aim of raising awareness of the Brazilian death toll of more than 600,000 people, the second highest in the world.
And in South Africa, blue and white ribbons were tied to a fence at St James’s Presbyterian Church in Bedford Gardens, east of Johannesburg, to remember the country’s 89,000 murders: each blue ribbon counts for 10 lives, white for one.
How victims of wars, atrocities, and even health crises are remembered has evolved through the ages. Statues of the victorious generals gave way to the tombs of the Unknown Soldier after World War I, in an attempt to remember the sacrifices of ordinary soldiers. The Arche de Triomphe in Paris was one of the first.
“The First World War was an especially important benchmark because it was followed by the 1918 flu pandemic,” said Jennifer Allen, an assistant professor of history at Yale University who has studied commemorative culture.
This pandemic appears to be little memorialized, in part due to the heavy focus on the war dead. “It was a period of mass death,” Allen said. “That’s why we talk about the lost generation.”
Allen said Holocaust memorials are the next major testimony to mass murder. They span large traditional landmarks such as the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, and more personalized things where the names of the victims are mentioned, such as the so-called tumbled stones outside the buildings that Jews lived in before the Holocaust.
Since the AIDS quilt made its way across the United States, as loved ones added squares to people who had given up, the health crisis has been the topic of remembrance on a scale like those now honoring the death of COVID-19. The quilt has grown to nearly 50,000 squares representing more than 105,000 individuals.
Allen said memorials such as AIDS Quilts and Stumbling Stones have helped cement the trend toward grassroots remembrance and a desire to honor victims as individuals. Both appear at COVID-19 memorials.
“We want to reach individuals, who make up the millions of deaths,” Allen said. And as people often point out: these were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, and neighbours. “
Commemorating coronavirus victims en masse has been complicated by the weight of personal grief, which was often borne alone in the first wave, when funerals could not be held and loved ones often died without a loved one present or caressing.
Italy’s Facebook group, Noi Denunceremo, started as a place to remember the dead publicly, albeit virtually, during the country’s first draconian lockdown, and has rapidly evolved into a trove of statements about alleged failures handed to prosecutors.
In India, one of the world’s worst-hit countries, an online memorial was launched in February, www.nationalcovidmemorial.in, to call for the verified submission of death certificates. So far, it only has 250 honors, a small portion of the more than 457,000 confirmed deaths, which is itself a much smaller number.
“It’s not just about memorializing, it’s how we can give respect and dignity” to the dead, said Abhijit Chaudhry of the COVID Care Network who started the memorial from the eastern city of Kolkata.
In St Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, a bronze statue called “The Sad Angel” was put up in March outside a medical school to honor the dozens of doctors and medical personnel who died of COVID-19. The carving of an angel with drooping shoulders and head hanging sadly is particularly poignant because its creator, Roman Shestrov, died himself of the virus in May 2020.
Italy has not set up a national memorial to the death of about 132,000 people, but it has set aside a day to commemorate the coronavirus. Prime Minister Mario Draghi stood among the first newly planted trees in Bergamo’s Troca Park on March 18, the first anniversary of the indelible image of army trucks transporting the dead to other cities for cremation after the city mortuary sank.
Bergamo’s mayor said the city had studied proposals for statues or plaques bearing the names of the dead. One was very formidable. The other ignored the fact that so many deaths were not officially counted due to a lack of testing.
“The Forests of Memory are a living monument, and it immediately seemed to us the most convincing, the most touching and the closest to our feelings,” said Giorgio Gori, Mayor of Bergamo.
Only 100 trees have been planted so far out of the 700 planned facing the hospital morgue. The rest should be sown by Memorial Day March 18 of next year.
No plans to add names, but in at least one case, loved ones claimed a bush: roses planted at the base, with personal mementos hanging from them and a white rock bearing the handwritten name of a dear departed: Sergio
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