As fate would have it, yesterday the person who proclaimed the new president of the Italian Senate, Ignazio La Russa, from Brothers of Italy, was the senator for life Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, who was in charge of presiding over the first session in substitution of former president Giorgio Napolitano, who was absent for health reasons, as the oldest member of the House.
In a moving speech, Segre, 92, underlined the symbolism of his participation as Italy is about to experience the centenary of the March on Rome, which brought Benito Mussolini to power. “The symbolic value of this random circumstance is amplified in my mind because, you see, in my time, school started in October. It is impossible not to feel some vertigo remembering that same girl who, on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, was forced by racial laws to leave her seat empty at school, and now finds herself by a strange fate in the lowest seat. prestigious Senate”, he remarked to those present.
Segre was one of 776 Italian children who were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She only survived 25. She has dedicated much of her life to telling the horrors of the Holocaust in schools. In 2019, Ella Italia shamefully assumed that she had to have a police escort because of the 200 intimidating messages she received every day. Her testimony caused the applause of the entire Upper House. She also applauded La Russa, who gave her some flowers. Yesterday everyone remembered that the post-fascist ex-militant's house was full of Mussolini memorabilia.
