Holocaust survivor opens Italian Parliament after elections
October 13, 2022
A 92-year-old senator-for-life, Liliana Segre, who endured Nazi concentration camps as a child, opened the new Italian parliament Thursday.
It was the first parliamentary session since Giorgia Meloni, who openly declares herself a fascist, emerged as best-placed to become the new prime minister following general elections last month.
Her speech set off the events that will formally bring Meloni's Brothers of Italy party to power after it won the largest number of votes in the September 25 elections. Brothers of Italy originated as a neo-fascist movement.
What did Segre say?
In a nod to the fascist past and present of Italy colliding, Segre openly marveled at the "symbolic value" of opening Parliament at a historic moment for Italy.
Segre recalled the centenary of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's March on Rome, which brought him to power. With war raging in Europe once again, Segre saw it as a teachable moment of reflection.
"Today, I am particularly moved by the role that fate holds for me. In this month of October, which marks the centenary of the March on Rome that began the Fascist dictatorship," she said, "it falls to me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy, which is the Senate of the Republic."
In her speech, she became emotional reflecting on what racism and fascism had done to her youth, much of it spent in a Nazi concentration camp. She was the lone survivor in her family.
"It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of vertigo, remembering that that same little girl who on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, was forced by the racist laws to leave her elementary school bench empty. And that, by some strange fate, that same girl today finds herself on the most prestigious bench, in the Senate."
All 200 Senators gave her a standing ovation, including Ignazio La Russa, the head of the Brothers of Italy delegation, who in 2018 proudly showed off his collection of Mussolini memorabilia in a video posted on the website of newspaper Corriere della Sera. He was subsequently elected speaker in the Senate.
When he took up his post, La Russa presented Segre with white flowers and thanked her for her "moral" leadership.
Who is Liliana Segre?
Segre survived deportation to Auschwitz as a child, one of the few Italian children to make it out alive. In recent decades, she has dedicated herself to Holocaust education in Italian schools.
Her advocacy led then President Sergio Mattarella to name her a senator-for-life in 2018 at a time when Italy was marking the anniversary of the introduction of racist, anti-Semitic laws during the fascist era.
Segre reiterated in her speech that the Italian constitution protects Italian citizens "without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion or personal or social conditions."
What is the Brothers of Italy?
The Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, came out of the Italian Social Movement founded in 1946 by former Mussolini officials. The Italian Social Movement drew in fascist sympathizers who remained unwavering in the postwar period even after Mussolini's execution the previous year.
The party remained small and on the fringes of Italy's far-right scene until the 1990s. It then became the National Alliance and worked to draw a line between the new party and the fascist past.
Meloni was a youth member of both parties before going on to found the Brothers of Italy in 2012. She kept the tricolor flame symbol associated with Italian fascism as her party logo.
Benito Mussolini ruled Italy for more than two decades, enacting racist, antisemitic laws that led to the death of 6,000 Jewish people in Italy at the hands of his ally Nazi Germany.
ar/rt (AP, Reuters)