Italy marks Holocaust Remembrance Day

(ANSA) - Rome, January 27 - 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.