NEWS Senator Segre addresses the Regional Council of Lombardy
By Daniel Reichel
Senator for life e Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre was a guest of the Regional Council of Lombardy, greeted by the Regional Council members from all political sides who, standing up, gave her a long applause.
Remembering the Jewish persecution, Segre explained: “Those who deny, the deniers of today and who will always deny as voices like mine disappear, will have great success. It is indeed easier to deny that all this has happened than admit that men can go so far as to commit unspeakable things. And if the things that have happened are unspeakable then it is easier to deny them”.
Segre invited all the Regional Council members to visit the Holocaust Memorial of Milan: part of the Central Station of the city, the site during the war was a working track from which the trains left for Auschwitz. From there Segre and his father were deported on January 30, 1944.
Remembering what her family had to suffer, she explained what is her role nowadays in the Italian Senate: “What does an old Italian woman who suddenly goes to the Senate, having never been involved in politics before? There is only one thing I can be the bearer of: a motion against hatred in all its forms, without distinction, because if you do not lecture against hatred without ever stopping, you also accept attitudes of petty daily hatred”.
Segre referred to the motion in which she proposed to create a Senate’s Commission against all forms of hate, racism, antisemitism. The motion was approved with the abstention of right-wing parties. “There is no censorship in the motion against hate speech, – she explained – there is only the feeling of those who have seen hate preach it first with words and then with deeds and I cannot, even though I am so old, stop fighting against hate. The world is drifting towards hatred and I want to preach peace and freedom instead”.
Before reaching the Council Chamber, Segre visited the exhibition set up in the events space of the Pirellone, in collaboration with the Jewish Brigade Museum and the Sons of the Shoah Association.
“Welcome to this Chamber which is a place of confrontation and democracy. Thank you for your presence and for your testimony that will enrich each of us”, the words with which the President of Lombardia Attilio Fontana welcomed Segre. “The drama of the Holocaust is a wound sculpted forever in European and Italian history, and we are called to remember it, to feel responsible for it, every year, thanks to the Holocaust Memorial Day and the program of initiatives carried out to ward off the risk of two terrible evils: oblivion and indifference”.