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.
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