Courtesy translation
Allow me to extend a warm greeting and thanks to the March of the Living, its organizers, to all the participants and to the dignitaries present.
Let me address a special greeting to the survivors, the valuable witnesses of truth.
We are here to pay homage to and commemorate the millions of citizens murdered by a blood-thirsty regime like the Nazi regime which, with the complicity of the European fascist regimes which surrendered their own citizens to the executioners, was guilty of committing a horrendous crime against humanity.
An outrageous crime can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.
In four years, from 1941 to 1945, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in this facility because of their belonging to a faith or culture, or because of their convictions or their condition.
In the Nazi camps, in addition to millions of Jews, who were the target of that inhuman horror-mongering machine, also political opponents, Sinti, Roma and disabled people and homosexuals found their death in the gas chambers or because of the cold, exertion, starvation, and disease, or because they were the victims of criminal experiments.
Innocent citizens from all parts of Europe were transported like animals in this place of death.
A boundless cemetery with no graves.
We can go to the Death Wall but, if we think of the victims, we must raise our eyes to look much further.
“You will go through the chimney”, was the threat launched by the concentration camp guards in the lagers.
Poland ended up paying a very high price in terms of human lives during the Nazi occupation.
Between the autumn of 1943 and the last few months of 1944, also thousands of Italians were deported here from Italy.
For practically almost all of them it was a one-way journey.
It is no coincidence that Poland and Italy are among the European Nations most committed towards conserving the Memory of the Holocaust and promoting knowledge of it among the young.
It is comforting to see that every year thousands of young girls and boys give life to this march.
This year, in this unforgettable experience, we are accompanied by two sisters who survived the horrors of Birkenau: Tatiana and Andra Bucci. With them are young students from my Country.
To Tatiana and Andra goes the gratitude of us all.
Today more than ever before, with Russia’s raging aggression against Ukraine bringing back up themes and issues that poisoned the 1930s, the Memory of the Holocaust remains a never-ending warning that can never be fulfilled.
Hatred, prejudice, racism, extremism, antisemitism, indifference, delusion, and the pursuit of power are always lying in wait, permanently defying the conscience of individuals and populations.
We cannot afford to make any concession to manifestations of intolerance and violence or backtrack in the protection of fundamental rights and liberties, the foundations of our peaceful coexistence.
Whoever assaults the international order that is grounded on these very principles must know that free people are and will always be united and determined in defending them.
Dear survivors, dear boys and girls, authorities,
Today is the day of the Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.
Remembrance is a dimension of commitment. It is proof that, against the heralds of oblivion, memory prevails.
To affirm the pride of wanting to be “human”.
To repeat – over and over – “never again”.
