Having trouble viewing this email? Click here January 30, 2023 – 8 Shevat 5783
  

"Never again to a world dominated by violence, abuses, racism, cult of personality, aggressions and war. Never again to a government that crushes freedom and rights. Never again to a society that discriminates, divides, isolates, and persecutes. Never again to a culture or an ideology that sings the praises of racial superiority, intolerance, fanaticism".
From the Quirinal palace, Head of State Sergio Mattarella expressed these clear and firm words on the duty of remembrance. A future-oriented action that arises from a conscious confrontation with the past, its mistakes, and horrors. As he underlined at the solemn ceremony for 27th January held at the presidential palace this year, Auschwitz, and all its associated camps, was as a matter of fact "the extreme but unavoidable consequence of anti-historical and anti-scientific drives, brutal instincts, prejudices, harmful beliefs and mean interests, and even fashion conformism".
It was the peak of a process triggered in Italy by the Racial Laws of 1938, the infamous deed of a regime that "cruelly acted against a part of our people". "From one day to the next, Italians of Jewish origin were denied citizenship, meaning membership of the state", recalled Mattarella. "Among these innocents, - he added - were numerous volunteers and decorated soldiers who fought in the First World War, protagonists of Italy's social, cultural and economic life. They were expelled from the army, the public administration, schools and universities. They were banned from working as self-employed professionals. Their books, their works of art, were banned and burned. Their goods confiscated. Their census as Jews favoured their later concentration in ghettos or detention camps and enabled the Nazi executioners to carry out the infamous work of deportation, in cattle trains, towards the factories of death". In northern and central Italy, he continued, "after the dramatic events following 8 September 1943, the fascist militia participated in the hunt and capture of Jews, who were handed over to the German SS". A mechanism of destruction that "would not have happened if there had not been a consensus, sometimes tacit but nevertheless widespread, in the population". A consensus with different degrees and motivations: "unconditional adherence, fear, but also, and often, conformism and that horrible moral apathy constituted by indifference".
 
Translation by Alice Pugliese, revised by Martina Bandini, students at the Secondary School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.

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The former Prefect of Rome Giuseppe Pecoraro was appointed as the new national coordinator for the fight against antisemitism. His nomination was announced by the President of the Council of Ministers Giorgia Meloni on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day with a note which thanked the former coordinator Milena Santerini "for her valuable work over the last years" and wishes Prefect Pecoraro "all the best with his new role".
So the UCEI President Noemi Di Segni commented on the news: “The appointment of Prefect Giuseppe Pecoraro as new national coordinator for the fight against anti-Semitism is an important signal that comes to us from Palazzo Chigi in these intense hours dedicated to the Memory. We thank Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for this, expressing our best wishes to the new coordinator for fruitful work with respect to the many challenges that characterize antisemitism in Italy today".
Di Segni further states: "The communities collectively express deep gratitude towards who preceded him, Professor Milena Santerini, for the commitment made in recent years for the launch of the national strategy, the guidelines for the schools and, eventually, the agreement for the memory network with the State Railways. Once again, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities is ready to get to work and provide the new coordinator with every useful support".

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Le Sénat italien a approuvé à l’unanimité une motion qui prévoit, encore pour cette législature, l'institution d’une Commission extraordinaire "pour contraster les phénomènes d’intolérance, de racisme, d’antisémitisme et d’instigation à la haine et à la violence" présentée par la sénatrice à vie Liliana Segre. Un long applaudissement l’a accueillie à Palazzo Madama, où 157 sénateurs sur 157 ont approuvé la proposition. "Notre guide devra toujours être la Constitution républicaine, qui, ce janvier 2023, célèbre le 75ème anniversaire de son entrée en vigueur" a résumé la Témoin de la Shoah milanaise en faisant référence à la séance du 19 janvier en tant qu’occasion "importante" pour renforcer l’engagement des institutions vers des thèmes fondamentaux comme la "liberté d’expression" et la "tutelle de la dignité de la personne".
Deux exigences, a souligné Segre, "complémentaires et non alternatives".  L’affirmation de la sénatrice en début de séance : "Notre travail dans la dernière législature a été précieux : la diffusion des réseaux sociaux comporte le risque de favoriser le discours de haine et les campagnes visant à encourager la discrimination et la propagation toxique des fake news". Et puis elle a ajouté : "Le travail de fouille et de connaissance sur les discours de haine devra se dérouler dans le respect de la Constitution. Mais on devra également s’engager à la mettre en œuvre, étendant l'inclusion et les droits sociaux et civils, étant conscients, en tant que parlementaires, qu’il existe aussi un lien entre le malaise social et l’emploi de discours de haine qui a un impact sur le travail d’une commission telle que celle que nous sommes sur le point d'approuver".

Traduction de Margherita Francese, révisée par Sofia Busatto, étudiantes à l’École Supérieure de Langues Modernes pour les Interprètes et les Traducteurs de l’Université de Trieste, stagiaires dans le bureau du journal de l’Union des communautés juives italiennes – Pagine Ebraiche.

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From the Shoah Memorial to the central synagogue. On Sunday in Milan, over a thousand people went through the places of memory and persecution as well as Jewish life and rebirth on the sixth edition of Run for Mem, the non-competitive race for remembrance organized by the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities in collaboration with the local Jewish community and the Municipality. "In Milan today we live, we run, we remember", remarked at the start UCEI President Noemi Di Segni.
"It is a carefree race in which young people, families, children, and the entire citizenry participate. We are together to affirm that the Jews are a living people, in the middle of the city, who do not run alone and do not remember alone". Alongside her, to lead the way in the Run for Memo was the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa along with the President of the Jewish Community of Milan Walker Meghnagi, the UCEI vice-president Milo Hasbani, and the President of the Shoah Memorial Foundation Roberto Jarach. On the starting line, with 1,200 runners equipped with Run For Mem t-shirts and bags behind him, Senate President La Russa expressed the importance of participating in the initiative. "Declarations don't count, the important thing is to be there. That is worth more than a thousand words. We are against antisemitism as well as anti-Zionism. For the life and existence of Israel," he said.

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Over 400 people participated in Bologna in the local edition of the Run for Mem promoted by local institutions and the Jewish community with technical implementation by UISP - Territorial Committee of Bologna. "The city responded present, with good participation in many ways. There were many of us again this year" pointed out the president of the Jewish Community Daniele De Paz, who spoke at the start of the race together with the mayor Matteo Lepore and the president of the CEI Matteo Zuppi. The participants were greeted by former Prime Minister Romano Prodi and the president of UCOII-Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy Yassine Lafram.

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Trieste was the city where Mussolini made antisemitism a law. On September 18th 1938, he announced the issuing of racist laws in Piazza Unità d'Italia to an immense cheering crowd. And a few years later, in a former rice husking facility on the outskirts of the city, the Risiera di San Sabba, the sole Nazi extermination camp in Italy was set. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, a touching ceremony took place in this former camp, visited last week by the Minister of Interior Piantedosi, which was
attended by the institutional representatives and a delegation from the Jewish community of Trieste led by its president Alessandro Salonichio and Rabbi Alexandre Meloni.
"If the seed of hatred was sown in our city in September 1938, – pointed out mayor Roberto Di Piazza - it is equally true that it did not take root in Trieste. Instead, the tree of love and coexistence grew strong where cultures, religions, and races find each other, meet, and together contribute to our social, cultural, and economic growth".

Photo by Giovanni Montenero.

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Rome Opera House was packed with young people last week for the national preview of the documentary "Il respiro di Shlomo" (Shlomo's Breath) on the life of Holocaust survivor Shlomo Venezia, among the very few Sonderkommandos and the only Italian one to escape death. The first of five events for Holocaust Remembrance Day under the patronage of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the evening offered an opportunity of remembrance through the example of a man who suffered the most inhumane experience and became a remarkable spokesman for the tragedy of the Shoah. Realized by the Shoah Museum Foundation in Rome to honor the centenary of the birth of Shlomo Venezia, who passed in 2012, the documentary is directed by Ruggero Gabbai and written by the historian Marcello Pezzetti. It revolves around an old interview with Shlomo preserved in the Archivio della Memoria (Memory Archive) of the CDEC Foundation. It is Shlomo's voice to guide the viewer from his native Thessaloniki, Greece, where he was arrested in his early twenties, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen, and Ebensee. "Everything brings me back to camp: whatever I do, whatever I see," he said. Through his imprisonment in Auschwitz, he was forced to work in the Sonderkommando, the team of inmates charged with the disposal and cremation of the prisoners killed in gas chambers. Therefore, his eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine was unique.

From the top, historian Marcello Pezzetti with Holocaust survivor Shlomo Venezia; the movie poster.

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By David I. Klein*

Just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Milan’s Holocaust memorial debuted an eye-grabbing new addition on some of its exterior walls: murals of characters from "The Simpsons" dressed as Jews under Nazi rule. But the Shoah Memorial Foundation said the well-known Italian pop artist who painted the murals didn’t reach out before creating the series of images, some of which show Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa Simpson in concentration camp garb. We were not involved in the decision process, and found the painting yesterday morning along with everybody else," a spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday. "We appreciate the intention behind it, and don’t find it particularly harmful," said Roberto Jarach, president of the foundation. 

*This article was originally published on Jewish Telegraphic Agency on January 27, 2023

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