In honour of International Holocaust Memorial Day, Mario Venezia joins us on Chai Montreal: The Podcast to speak about his father Shlomo Venezia and the documentary he produced about his father, Il Respiro di Shlomo (Shlomo's Breath).

Mario, an accomplished business consultant, professor, and President of the Museo della Shoah di Roma, tells us about the Venezia family history, leaving Spain at the time of the Inquisition in 1492 for Venice, then to Thessaloniki/Salonika.

Born in Thessaloniki in 1923, Shlomo Venezia and his family were taken from their home in 1944 and deported to Aushwitz-Birkenau. Shlomo survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mathausen and Ebensee, including the death march from Birkenau to Mathausen in January 1945. Shlomo was selected amongst the prisoners to be in the Sonderkommando, a forced labour unit compelled to work within the crematorium. The Nazis regularly killed and replaced the sonderkommando to eliminate witnesses, making Shlomo’s survival even more miraculous. Shlomo’s testimony has become one of the most important witness accounts.

Shlomo Venezia was an incredible man with incredible strength, and Mario recounts the greatest lessons that his father instilled in him and his brothers.

As Mario says in the episode, there was a Jewish life before the Shoah and there’s Jewish life now. And that’s what we’re here to celebrate on Chai Montreal: the Podcast.

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Erscheinungs­datum: 15.2.2026, 23:37:41