“The memory of the extermination of millions of Jews and people of other faiths can neither be forgotten nor denied.
There can be no fraternity without first dispelling the roots of hatred and violence that fueled the horror of the Holocaust. #HolocaustRemembranceDay”. This was stated by Pope Francis in a tweet on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance.
The commemoration with Mattarella took place at the Quirinale. "The principles that inform our republican Constitution and the Charter of Universal Human Rights are the radical denial of the universe that led to Auschwitz. Principles that today, unfortunately, we see threatened in the world by bloody wars of aggression, by obtuse repression and summary executions, by the worrying reemergence - fueled by the distorted use of social media - of anti-Semitism, intolerance, racism and denialism, which is the most subtle and insidious form of racism. This was said by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance.
“We cannot forget – remembering the Italian deportees – the suffering endured by our soldiers – states Mattarella -, interned in German prison camps, after refusing to join the ranks of the Republic of Salò, an ally and accomplice of the Nazi occupier. There were 650.000 of them. Their refusal represented an act of extreme courage, of moral redemption, of Resistance”.
“The system of Auschwitz and the camps connected to it was the extreme, but direct and inevitable, consequence of anti-historical and anti-scientific impulses, brutal instincts, prejudices, pernicious doctrines and narrow interests, and even fashionable conformisms. Lethal toxins – racism, aggressive nationalism, authoritarianism, cult of the leader, deification of the State – that circulated, since the early years of the last century, from universities to salons, even among artists and professors, poisoning peoples, clouding minds, making hearts and feelings arid”.
"The fascist regime, in 1938, with the racial laws - added Mattarella - acted cruelly against a part of our people. It is of great significance that the Constitution wanted to establish, in Article 3, the equal dignity and equality of all citizens, also with the expression "without distinction of race". Some have opined that it could appear to be an involuntary terminological concession to implicitly racist theses. The Constituents believed, on the contrary, that it manifested, in an unequivocal way, the distance that separated the new Italy from the racist one. To reiterate never again".
“The Shoah represents the abyss of humanity. An evil that has also deeply touched our nation with the infamy of the racial laws of 1938. It is our duty to ensure that the memory of those events and of what happened is not reduced to a mere exercise in style”. This is what Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote in a message on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance.
"It is not enough to remember, as we do today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day: there is no point in mourning the Jews who were killed if we are not on the side of the living ones, of the Jewish communities that are often victims of dangerous acts of anti-Semitism even today. But above all, it is not enough to remember if we do not defend the State of Israel, which is a great democracy and friend of Italy, it is the State of the Jews, which welcomed the survivors of the Holocaust, and is the guarantee that nothing similar will ever happen again in the future". Silvio Berlusconi wrote this on social media on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Article published on 27 January 2023 - 18:49
