Naples. The Municipality of Naples celebrates the May 1st holiday in the worst possible way and the Jewish Community is furious, the Councilor for Social Policies and Work, Monica Buonanno tries to take cover and apologizes.
AThe center of the controversy is a poster from the City Hall for May Day where the slogan was “work makes you free,” the same terrible slogan that Jewish deportees saw upon arrival at the Auschwitz extermination camp. A “serious” mistake by the Department of Social Policies and Labor, led by Monica Buonanno, so much so that late yesterday evening they tried to make amends by replacing the poster for the program with another one that read “Work makes you dignified.” “I am truly mortified, unfortunately the initiative has circulated with a title that reminds each of us of the Nazi extermination camps,” says Councilor Buonanno, “an oversight, certainly unforgivable, but it occurred in the context of an office that is working tirelessly these days to address the social emergencies of our city. I am an anti-fascist woman, I apologize.” The Jewish community of Naples, on the other hand, expresses indignation and deep dismay. “The subsequent correction by the municipality of Naples does not detract from the gravity of the choice made by the department; such a casual use of words reveals superficiality, insensitivity and unacceptable ignorance on the part of an institutional representation,” says the president, Lydia Schapirer. “All of this is offensive to the memory of the victims of the Shoah and to the Jews, the choice of that hateful expression and considers the episode a dangerous example of how correct knowledge of what happened has less and less space in certain administrations, evidently more accustomed to trivializing historical events than to correctly perceiving their real meaning,” she concludes. It is not the first time that the Jewish community and the Municipality of Naples have come to blows; a few months ago, controversy broke out over the appointment of Eleonora di Majo, councilor for Culture, who had posted explicit pro-Palestinian statements and expressed opinions deemed anti-Jewish on her social profiles.
Article published by the editorial staff on May 1, 2020 - 17:24 PM
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