Senator for life Liliana Segre to Pagine Ebraiche: “I’ll always be grateful to President Mattarella, and I am glad for his re-election”

By Daniel Reichel

“I will always be grateful to President Mattarella both for the symbolic choice of appointing me as Senator for life and for having chosen, as a first act in 2015, to visit the Fosse Ardeatine. He gave a clear message to the country, and I can only be happy with his re-election”. Back from Rome, where she participated in all the votes in Parliament, life Senator and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre expressed her satisfaction for President Mattarella second mandate to Pagine Ebraiche.
“I’ve been there with my head and legs the entire week. Not absent at all”, she remarked, alluding to her choice of not missing any of the votes. Not wanting to miss any of the voting. She then added: “I’m glad it ended up like this”.
About the political dynamics, she did not want to intervene: “The only joke I can make is, the arduous sentence to posterity”. But then she was keen to remind of the value of Mattarella’s choice to go to the Fosse Ardeatine, where on 24 March 1944 German occupation troops killed 335 civilians as a reprisal. “All the heads of State – she pointed out – sooner or later went there during their mandates, but he was the only one that I know of to go there as the first act of taking office. And this must never be forgotten. This sensitivity has been a constant of his presidency. Even my appointment, when he had only one senator to choose, is proof of this. Then, if he hadn’t chosen me, but someone like me, it would have been the same”. Both her appointment and the visit, Segre continues, are messages that the President “gave to the whole country, even to haters”.

Above, the meeting in 2018 between Senator for life Segre and President Mattarella on the occasion of the celebrations at the Quirinale on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Second row from left, Holocaust survivor and the historian Anna Foa (Photo Quirinale).