"I don't want to comment because it pains me. Unfortunately, many things are continuing, but we must not raise the white flag. Hoping and praying that the world will be at peace." Today's anti-Semitism worries Sami Modiano, 93 years old and with a hellish history behind him. Rounded up in Rhodes by the Nazis, interned in Birkenau, survived. Since 2000 he has been telling his story to young people, lending himself to their questions.
He did so again yesterday evening during the last meeting with the children of the schools of Rome and its province, as part of the Journey of Remembrance organized by Roma Capitale and its Metropolitan City with the mayor Roberto Gualtieri. The other survivor who accompanied the students, Tatiana Bucci, also responded to the question about the new anti-Semitism: "Anti-Semitism has never ended," she added. But we've always done it and we'll do it again this time."
The meeting was the last stage of the Journey, which began on Sunday with the discovery of the Krakow Ghetto and culminated yesterday with a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps. But the bridges between the past and the news, at such a critical moment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, had already emerged from day one, in the words of the Capitoline Councilor for Culture Miguel Gotor ("we must activate our antibodies against intolerance, anti-Semitism and barbarism that always risk returning") but above all in those of the vice president of the Jewish Community of Rome Antonella Di Castro: "The past returns with ferocity and once again we find Jews massacred just for being Jews."
Already that evening, under the vaults of the Tempel Synagogue in Krakow, someone had tried to ask Modiano for his thoughts on the news coming from Gaza. "I don't want to talk about it because it saddens me - he replied - Let's leave it to others to talk about this. I'm just here to talk about the Holocaust.
You can ask me anything about the Shoah and I will answer, but what concerns that tremendous pain... I'd rather not talk." Yesterday evening Sami Modiano and Tatiana Bucci met in plenary with the children of the 8 schools, keeping their promise after the visit to the lager. Did he think he could die? "I was only six years old," Bucci replied, "children don't know anything about death. We never had that fear, then I realized that we could die at any moment." What was eating, asks another boy. Modiano replies: "A kilo of bread in eight, working 12 hours a day, in terrible weather." "The children," Bucci added, "went out when the adults returned to the barracks." "There were eight people sleeping per bed - Sami said - The word hunger and the word cold were well known. Pain and suffering mean something to us. We were hoping at first to hear from the 80 percent of us we hadn't seen since we got off the train." But the most experienced prisoners responded by pointing to the smoke from the chimneys of Auschwitz.
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