Memorial Day
"It 's the case, then it can happen again." These words of Primo Levi were prescient of the present reality where we can see that the spirit murderess who has been planning the Holocaust, did not die and is ready for new massacres. The massacre of the city of Fallujah has been perpetrated in the style of the most genuine Nazi tradition. Today, as then, human life is despised and trampled upon. We witness daily the continuing slaughter of innocent civilians in Iraq as in Palestine. We assist the hundreds of deaths at sea of \u200b\u200bpeople trying to flee war and persecution, starvation and torture. But if they can touch the ground are then sent back to their dark fate. We all remember the Cap Anamur stuck in the middle of the sea under the shot guns and ships full of miserable people who escaped death in a death or another were rejected from one coast to another, from one country to another. Just as already had happened to the Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution, rejected, although it was known that they expected the death camp. Many crimes, not only against Jews, have never been punished and documents only when it was too late, have seen the light, they remained hidden in the famous cabinet of shame for 50 years.
The memory of the Holocaust should have produced antibodies to evil, to allow the birth of the values \u200b\u200bof coexistence, tolerance, accepting the other on its own, would promote the ability to empathically understand the pain of others and give birth to the consciousness that every people has the right to live in a land without oppressors.
We know that it was not so. Since the tragedy of Europe before the Holocaust the world said never again in nearly 90 wars have been fought. Were born several Guantanamo and torture has become an acceptable practice provided that it is fine to "enemy combatants." The Jews were called cockroaches and is the same name that some settlers and the Palestinians use to Iraqis in need of protection because they are subhumans and these are generally Muslims, belonging to an inferior civilization. Theorize that these racist characters are rewarded and recognized, they sell their wares to hundreds of thousands of copies. The parallel I want to do with what happened to the Jews is clear: Once dehumanized, devalued as a human being, the enemy or what is thought to be the enemy, you can destroy without remorse.
The value of this day of remembrance lies in remembering what happened because the memory becomes a supervisor because everything is not repeated again. Maybe not recur in the story never quite the same way, against another people.
I believe there is no better way to honor the memory of the Shoah that this attention, such vigilance because this never happens again that someone has taken away the right to life because it is jew, Muslim, Palestinian, migrant women or simply poor.
Speech during the celebration of "Remembrance Day" organized from the town of Bassano in 2005 in Teverina
