The ceremony of the “Day of Remembrance” was celebrated yesterday, January 27 in Padua, at the National Temple of the Unknown Inmate. After the flag raising and the greeting by the rector of the Temple, Don Fabio Artusi, the commander of the Northern Operational Forces, the army corps general Amedeo Sperotto, the mayor Sergio Giordani, and the president of the Jewish Community of Padua intervened. , Gianni Parenzo. General Sperotto, in his speech, explained how "the poem, prologue to the novel" If this is a man "by Primo Levi, entitled" Shemà "(Listen), gives a sense of the terrible tragedy we are talking about".
Words that are a scream of pain and anger but also a strong invitation to meditate because "this was. It happened and could happen again". "The day that recalls the Shoah - concluded Sperotto -, in this place of testimony to the horrors of which man was capable, there is still teaching, especially for the younger generations, on the values of civilization and humanity to which we refer, with the hope that a future will always arise from the past best".
Even the President of the Jewish Community of Padua, Gianni Parenzo, in his speech, recalled the victims of Nazism, the extermination of the Jews and the underestimation of the phenomenon that at least until the sixties has also crossed the Italian panorama. "Seventy-five years have passed since the Auschwitz gates were opened - explains Gianni Parenzo - and we know all about what the Holocaust was, the witnesses who for several years have kept silent fearful of not being heard and believed, have told us about the atrocities they had suffered. And precisely with the stories of the surviving witnesses, they became names and stories of families that gave concreteness to what was, before, the deprivation of rights with the expulsion from schools of students and teachers with the removal of professions from commitments public and private and then the marginalization from society.
We have to be aware - concludes Gianni Parenzo -, that fighting prejudice requires a cultural commitment at different levels, from elementary schools to university, and it is also necessary to find new communication tools ".
The mayor of Padua, Sergio Giordani, in turn recalled how the Day of Remembrance is not just an anniversary established to remember and not forget the six million Jews who were victims of the Holocaust, but that, rather, it must be a warning and motivation, teaching and inspiration not to repeat acts of low humanity: "Auschwitz and the day of January 27, have become the symbol of the Shoah - explains Sergio Giordani -, an event that has overwhelmed the Jewish people but also affects those who are not Jews.
The Shoah is an unparalleled event that forces us to remember and that forces us to ask how all this could have happened. A Europe has fallen into the heart of contemporary civilization, a civilization that has not yet managed to erase the idea of difference as a threat in all its aspects, from a religious, social and even sexual point of view. So the day of remembrance - concludes Sergio Giordani -, it is not just an anniversary, but a warning to constant and continuous vigilance. Memory and vigilance against racism, against all abuses, to prevent once again what could happen as a famous poem attributed to Bertolt Brecht reads: "..first of all the gypsies come to get and I was happy because they stole. Then they came to get the Jews and I kept quiet because I was disliked. Then they came to pick up the homosexuals and I was relieved because they were annoying. Then they came to pick up the communists, I didn't say anything because I wasn't a communist. One day they came to pick me up too and I didn't 'nobody was left to protest ".
