Anti-Semitic graffiti was found
scrawled outside the entrance of two schools in the town of
Pomezia, near Rome, on Wednesday.
Pomezia Mayor Adriano Zuccalà said council workers were
working to remove the graffiti outside the Pascal high school
and the Istituto Largo Brodolini, condemning the "cowardly
gesture".
Zuccalà said the episode was particularly bad as it comes
soon after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, when
Gabriele Sonnino, a survivor of the 1943 Raid of the Ghetto of
Rome that saw over 1,000 Jews rounded up and sent to Auschwitz,
spoke at the Istituto Brodolini.
Education Minister Lucia Azzolina said what happened in
Pomezia, which is part of the Rome metropolitan area, was
"shameful".
"I consider it an attack on the school and its educational
role," Azzolina said via Twitter.
"Racism and anti-Semitism will NEVER enter school".
Ruth Dureghello, the president of Rome's Jewish community,
said the incident was all the more serious because it "violates
the sacredness of education.
"The cowardly graffiti is a sign of violence that is
increasingly open and arrogant," Dureghello told ANSA.
"A cultural response is no longer sufficient, it is necessary
to repress this.
"We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated.
"We will continue to go to schools and pass on the memory (of
the Holocaust)".
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