Ban the "antisemitic demonstration scheduled on Holocaust Remembrance Day". This is the request coming from the Jewish Community of Rome to the authorities after the announcement of the march called for Saturday by the Palestinian movements. "We do not understand how it was possible to grant the authorization on a date that is international, moreover in the context of October 7, antisemitic massacre as we have not seen since the times of Nazism - says the president of the community Victor Fadlun -. To the institutions, national and local, we ask to prevent this disgrace" because "it would be a defeat for everyone".

For the president it is "inexplicable" the authorization also "for the possible consequences on public order" and the safety of Rome "and for the wound of the Shoah that reopens making the heart of every Jew bleed".

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The controversy

The controversy erupted Tuesday after a post on social media by the Palestinian movements announcing the demonstration for January 27: a march on Holocaust Remembrance Day, it reads, to "unmask the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of a system... that beats its chest for the victims of a genocide already occurred while it turns a blind eye and accomplice of an ongoing genocide". In the post, the student movement claims to "respect the victims of the Shoah" adding however that "January 27, as it is structured, is the tomb of the truth of justice and coherence". In the call, the movement also used the words that Primo Levi dedicated to the horrors of the Holocaust: "If understanding is impossible, knowing is necessary, because what has happened can return, consciences can again be seduced and darkened: even ours".

A use that triggered the clear response from the president of the Union of Italian Jewish communities Noemi Di Segni: "Leave Primo Levi to our memory". Today the position of the Roman community that, among other things, had met in the morning with the Minister of Culture Sangiuliano and with the city councilor Miguel Gotor to present the exhibition "The words of hate. Roman Jews sold to the Nazis" in the Foundation of the Shoah museum. Occasion in which Fadlun reiterated the warning on the words of hate that since October 7 have started to circulate again. "Antisemitic propaganda is always at work because antisemitism is always alive, latent or proclaimed. We thought it had been defeated, also thanks to many celebrations of Holocaust Remembrance Day. It's not so". That's why the community asks the institutions for "responsibility and common sense": the authorities must "take the only possible decision: say No to the antisemitic march on Holocaust Remembrance Day".