Mattarella warns of 'sly, insidious' Holocaust denial

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 27 - President Sergio Mattarella warned against the dangers of denialism, racism and anti-Semitism on Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday.
    "The principles that shaped our Republican Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are the radical rejection of the universe that led to Auschwitz," the head of State said.
    "Unfortunately, today we see those principles threatened around the world by bloody wars of aggression, by obtuse repression and summary executions, by a worrying re-emergence - fed by the distorted use of social media - of anti-Semitism, intolerance, racism and denialism, which is the most sly and insidious form of racism".
    Mattarella recalled the role Italy played in the Holocaust with the Fascist regime's 1938 racial laws and complicity of the Nazi puppet Italian Social Republic in deporting Jews to the death camps between 1943 and 1945.
    "In 1938 the Fascist regime cruelly acted against a part of its people," said Mattarella, adding that the Constitution says Italy must "never again" be a racist State. (ANSA).