«The Shoah was unique in a history of barbarism»- Corriere.it

«A commitment today unites us and challenges us. 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 glorifies racial superiority, intolerance, fanaticism». The president of the Republic Sergio Mattarella he closed the Remembrance Day ceremony with a heartfelt message from him. «Every year, the Day of Remembrance, established by law in 2000, urges us to remember, to testify and to meditate on the tragic events that crossed and struck Europe in the first half of the last century, the twentieth century; defined, by some historians, not without reason, as “the century of the Exterminations”. We do it, always, with a soul filled with anguish and reproach. In fact, the years that have passed since those mournful events do not lessen the sense of despondency, of existential emptiness, of boundless pain for the innocent victims that one feels in the face of the monstrosity of the system of mass extermination – of the Jews and of other groups considered unworthy of life – planned and organized by Hitler’s Nazism and its accomplices in Europe”.

The Head of State delved into the drama of that dark page of history: «Il system of Auschwitz and the camps connected to it was the extreme, but direct and inescapable, consequence of anti-historical and anti-scientific impulses, brutal instincts, prejudices, pernicious doctrines and petty interests, and even fashion conformisms. Lethal toxins – racism, aggressive nationalism, authoritarianism, leader worship, deification of the state – which circulated, since the early years of the last century, from universities to living rooms, even among artists and teachers, poisoning peoples, clouding minds, making them dry hearts and feelings”.

«It is essential – continued President Mattarella – to highlight how the racial persecution rested on a complex system of laws and provisions, conceived by complacent jurists, in defiance of the conception of law, which arises – as we know – from the need to protect the person from the arbitrariness of power and from the abuse of force. The Holocaust, in fact, i.e. the putting into practice of a desire to erase people and groups considered inferior from the face of the earth, was a slow and inexorable process, a long chain with many links and just as many responsibilities. The Nazi choice, with the notorious Nuremberg laws, and the fascist one – which followed it by homogenizing it – to create a human hierarchy based on the myth of race and blood provided the conditions for persecution and subsequent extermination.

«The fascist regime, in 1938, with the racial laws acted cruelly against one party of our people – underlined the Head of State – . 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.” «In northern and central Italy, after the dramatic events that followed 8 September 1943, the fascist militias took part in the hunt and capture of Jews, who were handed over to the German SS. There were many Italians, the “righteous”, who, risking and sometimes losing their lives, decided to resist Nazi barbarism, hiding or helping the Jews to escape. While paying tribute to these Italians today, we cannot ignore the existence of informers, informers and traitors who handed over human lives to the assassins, out of fanaticism or in cowardly exchange for money».

«The Holocaust was unique in human history, although it has always been marked by barbarism, wars, massacres and massacres. No State had ever, as the German historian Eberhard Jackel wrote, decided and announced, with the authority and under the responsibility of its leader, that it wanted to kill, as much as possible and without stopping, a particular group of human beings, including the elderly , women, children and infants; and never had he implemented this decision with all the means possible to the state power. This group consisted mainly of Jews, considered the lowest level in the insane human hierarchy, conceived by the Nazi-fascists. But prisoners of war, political opponents, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, belonging to other ethnic or religious minorities also perished in the extermination camps. The Italian Jews who are victims of racist persecutions are thousands of people, the majority of whom disappeared in the dark universe of Auschwitz».

«The major part of the responsibility of the laws and racist politics, in Germany and Italy must be attributed to the leaders of the two regimes, Hitler and Mussolini. But the terrible mechanism of destruction would not have been set in motion if it had not enjoyed a consensus, sometimes tacit but still widespread, among the population. A consensus with different degrees and motivations: unconditional adhesion, fear, but also, and often, conformity and that horrible moral apathy constituted by indifference. Few and isolated were the enlightened figures who, in Germany and Italy, raised their voices to condemn racism and its lethal drift”. «78 years ago on January 27, with the demolition of the gates of Auschwitz, the world saw with its own eyes the horror of the Shoah, the deliberate Nazi plan for the persecution and extermination of the Jewish people. Today Italy – writes Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the message – pays tribute to the victims, clings to their loved ones, honors the courage of all the righteous who risked or lost their lives to save others and bows to the survivors for the tireless witness service that they carry on.

“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”. the message of the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

This, however, is the message of the President of the Senate, Ignatius LaRussa. “The Senate has been and will always be at the forefront of spreading the profound meaning of Remembrance Day. He will be an interpreter, messenger, promoter of initiatives, because rejecting all forms of hatred, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism is and must be a priority. We all have a duty not to forget and to make the younger generations aware of the drama and atrocities experienced by the Jews, starting with the infamy of the racial laws, so that similar tragedies can never happen again. My hope is that an anniversary as important as the one we are celebrating today can enter into everyday life, into schools, into the hearts of young people and that every day of the year will be Remembrance Day”.

«We remember one of the darkest and most painful pages in history. To never forget the horrors of Nazi-fascism”. The Speaker of the House writes it on Twitter Lorenzo Fontana where the message from the Foreign Minister also appears Antonio Tajani: «Knowing and understanding the Shoah, also by curbing all forms of denial, means preserving the founding values ​​of the Republic and of the common European home, built on Judeo-Christian roots. Always remember, so that similar tragedies do not happen again”. Tajani, who is also vice president of the Council of Ministers, has published an image depicting in the background the entrance to the Birkenau concentration camp, located in Poland, and in the foreground a sentence by Anne Frank, a young Jewish woman and author of the well-known Diary which was later published posthumously, after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945: «What happened – reads the quote – cannot be cancelled, but it can be prevented from happening again ».

The whole political world pays homage to Memory with messages, memories, testimonies. Here are some. Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia: «The Shoah was not only a great tragedy. It is a crime that cannot be assimilated to any other, because it is the only scientific attempt to erase the very memory of the existence of a people from the face of the earth. For this reason we must never trivialize what happened, not even by comparing it to other great crimes against humanity. Enrico Letta, Pd secretary: «Forgetting one’s past and being condemned to relive it. From the words of Primo Levi the need and the absolute duty not to forget to avoid that risk of tiredness that Liliana Segre courageously denounced. Remembrance Day”. Adolfo UrsoMinister for Business: «Cultivating memory is still today a precious vaccine against indifference and helps us, in a world so full of injustice and suffering, to remember that each of us has a conscience and can use it». Charles Calenda, leader of Azione: «Walking through absolute evil, where the fascist police and the Nazis sent thousands of people to their deaths by loading them like beasts on sealed wagons. We were accomplices in the greatest crime in history. Feeling guilty is useless, being aware of it is a moral obligation”. Nicola Fratoianni, secretary of the Italian Left: «Woe to imprison Remembrance Day in the cage of bureaucratic recurrence. From January 27 of each year and for 365 days, the Shoah must be very much alive and present in the memory and knowledge of what happened, what could happen again and what must be prevented from happening again”.

And then again. Maria Elisabetta Casellati, Minister for Reforms: «The memory of the Nazi-Fascist persecutions of the Jews must prompt us to reflect on the brutality and madness of every war. Remembrance Day is not just a commemoration but an opportunity to reflect on the sacrifice of all the persecuted people who fight for freedom and dignity in the world. The tragedy of the Holocaust, one of the most dramatic in the history of humanity, must be a warning that the errors, committed not only out of cruelty, but out of indifference and complicity, never happen again”. Matthew Salvini, Minister of Infrastructure: «Today is Remembrance Day. The League has brought forward a proposal, already approved in the Senate, for the creation of a fund for ‘Memory Trips’ dedicated to educational visits, schools and students. To keep alive the memory of these atrocities even among the youngest, so that it never happens again”.