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Italy Holds First Holocaust Memorial Day
Italy joined Germany, Britain and Sweden in holding the first Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday, exactly 56 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
Political leaders commemorated the event in speeches from various parts of the country, all stressing the lessons to be learnt from the Jewish holocaust and the need to remember.
Italian Lower House Speaker Luciano Violante said from Palermo, the capital of Sicilia region, that "I would like this day to be one in which we put aside divisions and unite around the same values." "Italy must have issues which unite it, like the fight against racism," he continued.
He said that the Jewish holocaust had to be commemorated apart from other genocides because "the reasons behind every tragedy are different. Dealing with them separately helps us to realize that these evils can be beaten."
"Nazism didn't begin with the extermination of the Jews but with the imprisonment of political opponents, the mentally ill and gypsies and slowly this mechanism led to the killing of six million people," he said.
He underscored that the only way to avoid the repetition of such a tragedy was by remembering it, adding "our one duty is not to forget."
More than 1.5 million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, which was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.
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