President Sergio Mattarella and
Premier Giorgia Meloni both recalled Italy's role in the Shoah
as they marked International Holocaust Remembrance 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," Mattarella 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 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.
Meloni said that "the Shoah represents the abyss of humanity" in
her message for Holocaust Memorial Day.
She added that it was "an evil that touched in depth our nation
too, with the abomination of the 1938 racial laws.
"It is our duty to make sure that the memory of those events and
of what happened is not brought down to a mere stylistic
exercise," she continued.
"The challenge that all of us - institutions, civil society,
educational agencies, information and mass media organs - have
before us is to cultivate our commitment to the memory (of the
Holocaust) every day, raise awareness in young generations and
intensify the effort to combat anti-Semitism in every form it
manifests istelf".
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