Remembrance Day

Picture source http://commons.wikimedia.org

The 27th January: "Remembrance Day", a day to remember the victims of Holocaust. On the 27th January 1945 the Allies opened the gates of the Auschwitz lager and the atrocities of the war seemed to disappear if compared to what was hidden behind those gates. It was like Pandora's box was opened and the whole world was suddenly aware of what level of sickness and perversion mankind was capable of.

Pretty much every national channel has a couple of programmes about it today. But very few people point out that in Italy, from 1938, we had racial laws like in Germany, that Jewish people were stripped of their civil rights, couldn't go to school, have a job, marry Italian citizens.

I went on and read the laws. All of them. The "race manifesto" was just plain grotesque:

[...] IV: The current population of Italy is, for the most part, of arian origin and arian culture.

If this hadn't caused the death of so many people, I would laugh. "Arian" isn't quite the first term that comes to mind if you're looking for adjectives to describe Italians.

But people don't talk about it. No, it's easier to forget and blame everything on the big bad Nazis. Italians, after all, are good people.


My Italian blog entry on the subject: Ricordare sì, ma ricordare tutto