Italy marked Holocaust
Remembrance Day on Tuesday with ceremonies and events up and
down the country commemorating the 70th anniversary of the
liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp,
Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"Italy honours and remembers the Day of Memory 70 years
after the liberation of Auschwitz. Never again," said Premier
Matteo Renzi in an early morning tweet.
He was echoed by Pope Francis, who said "Auschwitz cries
out the pain of an immense suffering and invokes a future of
respect, peace and meeting between peoples".
Pietro Grasso, senate Speaker and acting Italian president,
called for a "firm and united" response to anti-Semitism to
avert any recurrence of the "horrors" of the Shoah, in which six
million Jews died.
His comments came as Federica Mogherini, European high
representative for foreign policy, warned that "violent
anti-Semitism is still alive".
"70 years after the Holocaust there are Jewish communities
in Europe who once again feel threatened," Mogherini said,
recalling the storming of a kosher supermarket in Paris on
January 9 in which four Jews were gunned down.
"And so today, more than ever, it is not enough to say
'Never again'," she continued.
"We must turn our words into actions", informing the new
generations to make a stand against anti-Semitism and
discrimination.
Also on Tuesday PD Senator Luigi Manconi, head of the
Senate human rights committee, recalled numerous other victims
of Nazi extermination during the Second World War.
"On this day of remembrance and commemoration it is right
to recall the extermination of ethnic Roma under Nazi-fascism
and highlight the new wave of intolerance towards them," Manoni
said.
Roughly 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were put to death in
Nazi concentration camps in what they refer to as the Porrajmos,
meaning 'devouring' in Romany language.
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