(JHE) — Elio Carmi, a cultural activist, nationally known creative designer, and president of the tiny Jewish community in the town of Casale Monferrato, in northwest Italy, died Monday (January 8), aged 71. He suffered from pleural mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.
Carmi, noted for his bald head and big, bushy beard, was instrumental in the development and promotion of the Jewish museum that forms part of the complex anchored by the city’s ornate 16th century synagogue, which opened to the public in 1969 following the full-scale restoration of the synagogue. In 2006 he also was instrumental in founding the OyOyOy Jewish Culture Festival, held annually in Casale.
In the mid-1990s, he and several artist friends established the Museum of Lights, an expanding collection of contemporary Hanukkah Menorahs, or Hanukkiyot, produced by Jewish and non-Jewish artists. It is now located in the basement of the synagogue complex, which once housed a mikveh and matzo oven.
“The idea was born to show that Jews, though small in number, are determined; and to use interpretations of the Hanukkah menorah to demonstrate, symbolically, the continuity of the community,” Carmi told JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber in 2017.
Each one, he said, was a “homage to the story of Hanukkah” and its message of the triumph of light over darkness.
By now there are more than 250 menorahs in the collection, though only 30 to 40 can be displayed at a time in the vaulted underground chambers. They represent a wide range of sometimes fanciful forms, and some were designed by famous artists.
Carmi’s last public appearance, wheelchair bound, was presiding at the community’s Hanukkah celebrations this past December.
In an autobiographical book, published last fall, Carmi discussed his illness, and he also posted about it on his Facebook page.
Hundreds of residents of Casale have died from asbestos-related disease due to pollution from a big factory, Eternit, that produced asbestos-reinforced cement and functioned from 1907-1986.
A series of trials over more than a decade ended up last summer with the sentencing of the former main shareholder in Eternit, a Swiss billionaire, to 12 years in prison for the aggravated manslaughter of nearly 400 victims of asbestos poisoning.