Mattarella visiting Auschwitz: “A place of horror” – Corriere.it

“A place of horrors”. President Sergio Mattarella said this while visiting the pavilions of the Nazi camp in Auschwitz during his state visit to Poland. The President, accompanied by his daughter Laura and the deputy foreign minister, Edmondo Cirielli, was welcomed by sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci, who survived deportation to the concentration camp, and representatives of the Jewish communities. As a first step, the head of state placed a wreath in front of the “execution wall”. Then he visited the museum together with the Bucci sisters and the students of three Italian institutions: the “Leonardo da Vinci” high school in Terracina, the “Rinaldini” high school in Ancona and the “Pujati” high school in Sacile.
«Already studying it, and I have done it for a very long time, is impressive. But seeing it is another thing. It gives the measure of the unimaginable,” said the head of state during a visit to the rooms where the personal belongings of the camp prisoners are kept. “We saw hair, shoes, suitcases, crockery. Each of these things was a person taken away from life for no reason, only out of hatred, racism, anti-Semitism, prejudice. It is a horror so great that it is unimaginable. Coming here and transmitting the feelings that come from it is important for a future of peace. We must continue to remember and we must remember that what we see is a small part».
The president then launched an appeal to the students present: «You too must pass on the memory. You too must pass it on to those who will come later». Tatiana Bucci, moved, underlined the importance of the occasion: «I have never lost hope and I don’t think that the twentieth century will ever be forgotten, it is too important a century to forget, so I am sure the memory of the Shoah is also that will continue, no one will ever forget.
Mattarella then moved to the Birkenau camp area to take part in the closing ceremony of the March of the Living, an event which every year commemorates the victims of the Holocaust on the twenty-seventh day of Nissan according to the Jewish calendar, which this year corresponds to the 18th April on the Gregorian one. In the photo, Mattarella in front of the execution wall (via Twitter)

— Edited by Giuseppe Scuotri