Remembrance day, celebrations throughout Italy. Mattarella: "Never again a racist country"

Commemorations throughout Italy are scheduled for today, January 27, Remembrance Day . Established in 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly on a symbolic date, that of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945 , Italy provides, in law 211 of 2000, that the Republic remember this day so as not to forget "the Shoah (extermination of the Jewish people), the racial laws, the Italian persecution of Jewish citizens, the Italians who suffered deportation, imprisonment, death, as well as those who, even in different camps and alignments, opposed the extermination project , and at the risk of their own lives they saved other lives and protected the persecuted”.

There are numerous initiatives organized at local level, while the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, took part in the events at the Quirinale , in a ceremony that saw passages by Primo Levi, Vassilij Grossman and Yankel Yakov Wiernik read. Maestro Francesco Lotoro, the violinist Fabrizio Signorile and the soprano Anna Maria Stella Pansini performed the musical pieces "Kol Nidrei", "Mazurek" and "Traum", followed by the rapper Davide Milano. During the celebration, opened by the projection of a film edited by RaiStoria, the President of the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center Foundation, Giorgio Sacerdoti, the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni and the Minister of Education took part and of merit, Giuseppe Valditara; Ugo Foà, a victim of the racial laws, gave his testimony when interviewed by two female students. The ceremony ended with a speech by the President of the Republic.

In Sardinia the Municipalities have planned ceremonies and events.

MEMORY – «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 what happened is not reduced to a mere exercise in style". words of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni . "Today Italy pays homage to the victims - continues Meloni - clings to their loved ones, honors the courage of all the righteous who risked or lost their lives to save others and bows down to the survivors for the tireless service of witness that carry on".

«The fascist regime, in 1938, with the racial laws acted cruelly against a part of our people – the words of the president Sergio Mattarella -. It is of great significance that the Constitution wanted to sanction, in article 3, the equal dignity and equality of all citizens, even with the expression "without distinction of race". Some have opined that it may appear an involuntary terminological concession to implicitly racist theses. The Constituents believed, on the contrary, that it unequivocally manifested the distance that separated the new Italy from the racist one. To repeat never again." «A commitment today unites us and challenges us – continued Mattarella -. Never again in a world dominated by violence , oppression , racism , personality cult, aggression, war. Never again to a state that tramples freedom and rights . Never again to a society that discriminates, divides, isolates and persecutes . Never again to a culture or an ideology that praises racial superiority, intolerance, fanaticism ».

Even the world of art and culture adhere to the anniversary: in Milan the street artist AlexSandro Palombo created a graffiti on an external wall of the Central Station that represents the famous Simpson family in the role of deportees to Nazi concentration camps , with the yellow star sewn on the clothes, the symbol imposed on the Jews.

(Unioneonline)