On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the names and surnames of the victims and renew the memory of what happened, also through the precious testimony of survivors and their descendants. Today we celebrate the Righteous of every nation, who did not hesitate to risk their lives to oppose the Nazi plan and save innocent lives. On this day, we once again condemn the complicity of the fascist regime in the persecutions, roundups, and deportations. A dark page in Italian history, sealed by the ignominy of the racial laws of 1938.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, on the day dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust, stated: "Unfortunately, after many years," Meloni continued in the statement, " anti-Semitism has not yet been definitively defeated. It is a disease that has returned to spread, in new and virulent forms. Today we reaffirm our commitment to preventing and combating every aspect of this scourge, which poisons our societies and aims to undermine the principles of freedom and respect that are the foundation of social cohesion."
Meanwhile, the ceremony for the Day of Remembrance was held at the Quirinale with the highest officials of the State, Senator Liliana Segre and the survivors Edith Bruck and Sami Modiano.
" We can and must talk about Gaza on Holocaust Remembrance Day ," Segre emphasized. "We can talk about Iran, Iran, Ukraine, and everything that concerns humanity, but we cannot use Gaza against Holocaust Remembrance Day. It cannot become an opportunity for revenge against the victims of that time."
Then, the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, addressed the audience : "The attempt by Nazi Germany to erase the Jews from the face of Europe symbolically embodies all the evil that man is capable of committing when he allows himself to be infected—through superficiality, indifference, cowardice, or self-interest—by the virus of hatred, racism, and oppression. When reason is clouded to the point of extinction, when the innate, opposing sentiments of humanity—solidarity, the sense of one's own dignity and the responsibility that comes with it, compassion—wither, barbarism is reborn, and the values of freedom, peace, and brotherhood, inherent in every man and woman, give way to their opposite, giving rise to war, slavery, violence, and extermination ."
(Unioneonline/D)