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| Solemn commemorations in Italy
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Italy’s Holocaust Remembrance Day was set up by an Italian law in 2000, five years before a similar decision by the UN.
On 27 January, both the central and the regional authorities, supported by the small but lively Italian Jewish communities, organised a series of public ceremonies, movie screenings, theatre performances, conferences and debates on the anti-Jewish persecutions of the Fascist regime that culminated in the extermination of some 8,000 Italian and foreign Jews. Many schools were involved in the celebrations.
However, despite the general commitment aimed at raising awareness of Italy’s recent past, Nazi slogans, swastikas and portraits of Mussolini were waved at Rome’s Olympic stadium during the 29 January match between Roma and Livorno, whose supporters are famed for being left-wing.
Echoing many commentators, Italy's best-selling sports daily, La Gazzetta dello Sport, said that “these banners make your flesh creep”. They were displayed right after Holocaust Remembrance Day.
According to a recent decree by interior minister Pisanu, if caught by the stadium film cameras, supporters who brandish such Fascist slogans could be sentenced to three years, while the sporting club risks a home ban.
New generations
A week before the memorial day, the RAI TV network introduced the event by airing a series of short ‘social ads’ on the Shoah that ended with the words of famous Italian-Jewish survivor and writer Primo Levi: "It happened, therefore it can happen again".
RAI also broadcast a number of in-depth documentaries on the Shoah, along with movies such as a “The Pianist” by Roman Polanski. Parliament and several cities observed a minute’s silence at noon, while many schools stopped classes at 11:45 to commemorate the precise time the Red Army entered Auschwitz extermination camp.
On 26 January, the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi received a delegation of Italian junior high-school students and awarded the best-written composition on the Shoah.
Meanwhile, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi met at the Quirinale with a joint delegation of Italian students and survivors. Both ceremonies aimed at stressing the responsibility of the new generations for keeping alive the memory of the Shoah.
Milan and Rome museums
Speaking at the presentation of a project for a new Museum of the Shoah in Rome on 27 January, Rome’s mayor Walter Veltroni said that “the Fascist regime had a huge responsibility for the persecution and extermination of Italian Jews”.
The museum is due to be built at Villa Torlonia, a highly symbolic venue in Italy’s recent history. The villa was Mussolini's residence and therefore “a symbol of the Fascist regime” said Veltroni.
Furthermore, the same area happens to also be the site of some ancient Jewish catacombs. The mayor plans to inaugurate the new museum 16 October 2008, on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of a round-up of more than 1,000 Jews in Rome’s ghetto.
On 29 January, Milan echoed Rome. Speaking at a conference on the anti-Jewish persecutions in Italy, Milan’s culture councillor Stefano Zecchi announced the municipality’s intention to turn platform nr. 21 of Milan’s Central Station into a Shoah Museum.
The province’s culture councillor Daniele Benelli also underlined the importance of the project, as “remembrance should not be an occasional duty and it needs to become an awareness we find in our everyday lives,” he said.
“The unknowing commuters who today catch their trains from that platform need to know that that’s where 650 Milan Jews were deported on an armoured railcar on 30 January 1944,” he added.
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