Street dedication to neofascist leader Almirante sparks fierce criticism in the Jewish community

To name a street after Giorgio Almirante means not just to celebrate him but Fascism, and this “cannot and should not happen”. So the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities and the Jewish Community of Turin addressed the mayor and the main institutional authorities after the green light by the Toponomy Committee of Alessandria municipality to the proposal of the city council president Emanuele Locci to name a street after the neo-fascist leader.
According to Locci, elected in a civic list but reported to be in strong harmony with Fratelli d’Italia, the work of Almirante would represent a beacon “by which be inspired continuously” and his support for the antisemitic cause must be considered a trivial youth experience “to be contextualized in a historical perspective”. The word on the proposal will now pass to the mayor and the town council of the Piedmont municipality.
The intervention of the UCEI President Noemi Di Segni and the President of the Jewish Community of Turin Dario Disegni is aimed at averting an outcome detrimental to the history, memory, and dignity of Italy.
We consider it a precise civil duty – they wrote – to raise our voice to prevent that dedication” even more so because the City of Alessandria was awarded the Gold Medal for military valor for its merits in the Resistance to Nazi-Fascism. A street honoring Almirante would be an outrage to Alessandria and to “the heroic struggle waged by its population against Nazi-fascism during the dark years of the war and to the tribute paid by Alexandrian Jews, twenty-five of whom, in a population of 245 Jews in the city, were arrested by the Nazi-fascists, ended up in extermination camps and never returned”.

“We cannot forget – reads the message – that Almirante, former editor in chief of Il Tevere, a fascist newspaper directed by Telesio Interlandi, and of the newspaper La Difesa della Razza (The Defense of the Race), head of the Cabinet of the Ministry of Popular Culture of the Republic of Salò, in 1947 was referred to the Provincial Commission of the Rome Police Headquarters for the heated fanaticism shown under the past regime and for the initiatives to exalt the twenty years and to propagate subversive principles of democratic institutions”.
“We cannot forget that in 1947 Almirante was convicted of collaborating with the Nazi troops, so that a police confinement measure was issued against him, that in 1958 was denounced by the Trieste Police Headquarters for ‘Insult of the Constitutional Bodies of the State’, in 1971 the Prosecutor of the Republic of Spoleto asked the Chamber the authorization to proceed against him for the crimes of ‘Public Instigation to Attack the Constitution’ and ‘Armed Insurrection against the Powers of the State’, and in 1972 the Milan Prosecutor, Bianchi D’Espinosa, asked for the authorization to proceed against him for the attempted reconstitution of the Fascist Party”.
“We cannot forget the Manifesto launched on May 17, 1944 to the stragglers and members of the gangs who ‘must present themselves to all the Italian and German military and police posts by midnight on May 25th. All those who do not show up will be considered outlawed and taken to arms by shooting in the back ‘“.
“Finally, we cannot forget what Almirante wrote in La Difesa della Razza on May 5, 1942: ‘Racism must be food of everyone and for everyone if we really want that in Italy the consciousness of race is to be present and alive in everyone. Our racism must be that of the blood, which flows in my veins, which I feel flowing back into me, and I can see, analyze and compare with the blood of others. […]. Otherwise, we will end up playing the game of the mongrels and Jews […]. There is only one certificate with which the halt can be imposed on hybridization and Judaism: the certificate of blood ‘“.
Almirante’s life, choices, values, and actions – the letter points out – “were neither during Fascism nor the Republic, evidence of development and civil progress, necessary for a society worthy of that name”.

Above, the façade of the historic synagogue of Alessandria.