On the occasion of the 79th anniversary of the roundup of the Jewish ghetto in Rome on Sunday, the leader of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party and probable future Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, denounced “the Nazi-fascist fury”. “October 16, 1943 is for Rome and for Italy a tragic, dark and indelible day. That morning, minutes after 5 a.m., the vile and inhumane deportation of Roman Jews by Nazi-fascist fury: women, men and children were torn from life, house by house,” Giorgia Meloni wrote in a statement.
That day, German police arrested hundreds of people in the Jewish ghetto. A few foreigners or people from mixed marriages were later released, but 1,022 men, women and children were sent to concentration camps. Only 15 men and one woman returned. In total, nearly 8,000 Italian Jews died in the concentration camps.
“Building antibodies against indifference and hatred”
“A horror that must sound like a warning so that these tragedies do not happen again. A memory that we know is that of all Italians, a memory that serves to build antibodies against indifference and hatred. A memory to continue to fight, in all its forms, anti-Semitism,” concluded Giorgia Meloni.
The co-founder by Fratelli d’Italia, Ignazio La Russa, elected Thursday to the presidency of the Senate after the victory in the legislative elections of September 25 of a coalition between the right and the extreme right, also evoked “one of the darkest pages of our history”. A controversial personality, collector of fascist relics, he expressed “to the Jewish community, today as always, [son] most sincere support.
When the new Senate was inaugurated on Thursday, it was a Holocaust survivor, Liliana Segre, 92, who as dean chaired the first session. She then underlined “the symbolic value” of her presence, “in this month of October marking the centenary of the March on Rome which was the beginning of the fascist dictatorship”.