"I condemn the racial laws of 1938,
of which I still feel all the weight on my shoulders
and with me the whole Royal House of Savoy, and I solemnly declare that we do not recognize ourselves in what Vittorio Emanuele III did: a painful signature, from which we we firmly dissociate,
an unacceptable document, an indelible shadow for my family
, a wound still open for the whole of Italy ".
It is a passage from the letter to the Jewish community written by Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, who talks about it in an interview in the Special Tg5 Words from Silence broadcast tomorrow in the late evening, anticipated by Tg5 at 20 tonight.
Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia in the letter of apology writes: "I turn to all of you, Brothers of the Italian Jewish Community, to express my sincere friendship and convey all my affection to you on the solemn 'Day of Remembrance'. I am writing a letter to you with an open heart certainly not easy, a letter that may surprise you and that perhaps you did not expect. Yet know that for me it is very important and necessary, because I believe that, once and for all, the time has come to come to terms with the history and the past of Family that today I am here to represent, in the millenary name of that Royal House that contributed decisively to the unification of Italy, a name that I proudly bear ".
"I am writing to you, Jewish Brothers, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, a symbolic date chosen in 2000 by the Parliament of the Italian Republic, in perpetual memory of a tragedy that saw 6 million perish at the hands of Nazi-fascist madness of European Jews, of which 7,500 our Italian brothers ", the letter continues.
It is in the memory "of those sacred Italian victims that today I wish to officially and solemnly ask for forgiveness in the name of my whole family. I have decided to take this step, a duty for me, so that the memory of what happened remains alive, so that the memory may always be here I'm".
So the passage in which Emanuele Filiberto affirms that he condemns the racial laws of 1938, "of which I still feel all the weight on my shoulders and with me the whole Royal House of Savoy and I solemnly declare that we do not recognize ourselves in what King Vittorio did Emanuele III: a painful signature, from which we firmly dissociate ourselves, an unacceptable document, an indelible shadow for my family, an open wound for the whole of Italy. I condemn the racial laws in memory of my glorious ancestor King Carlo Alberto who on March 29, 1848, he was among the first sovereigns of Europe to give Italian Jews full equality of rights.
I condemn the racial laws in memory of the numerous Italian Jews who fought with great courage on the battlefields of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as true Patriots.
I condemn the signing of the racial laws in memory of the visit to the new Synagogue in Rome that my great-grandfather Vittorio Emanuele III made in 1904, after that on January 13 of the same year he even said he was in favor of the birth of the Jewish state and so he expressed himself: ' Jews, for us, are Italians, in all respects' "." I want history not to be erased, history not to be forgotten and that history always has the opportunity to tell what happened to all those who are hungry and thirst for truth.
The victims of the Holocaust must never be forgotten and for this reason, even today, they cry out to us their desire to be rightly remembered.
Even my home suffered personally, albeit for political reasons, and was deeply wounded in the dearest affections: how could we forget - observes in the letter to the Jewish community - the tragic end of my aunt Mafalda di Savoia, who died on August 28 1944 in the Buchenwald concentration camp after a terrible agony?
How could I forget that my aunt Maria di Savoia was also deported with her husband and two of their children to a concentration camp near Berlin?
And both were daughters of the same Vittorio Emanuele III "." I am writing to you Jewish brothers, with vivid and profound emotion in the excruciating memory of the sweep of the Ghetto which took place on October 16, 1943. I write to you Jewish brothers, in the anguished memory of too many victims that our beloved Italy has lost.
I am writing to you this letter of mine, sincerely felt and desired, which I address to the whole Italian community, to re-tie those unfortunately broken threads, so that it may be a first step towards that dialogue that today I wish to resume and follow personally.
With all my sincere brotherhood "concludes Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia. In the special 'Words of silence', broadcast tomorrow in the late evening and edited by Roberto Olla, the Tg5 cameras went to the home of Sami Modiano, in Rome, and to the Memoriale Binario 21, in Milan, together with Liliana Segre.
