The scene of a roundup of Jews in October 1943, Rome will finally have its Holocaust museum, to which the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni gave the green light Thursday evening.
Italy, through
"the institution of a national museum of the Shoah in Rome"
, wants
to "contribute to keeping alive and present the memory of the Shoah"
, explained the government in a press release published at the end of the last council of ministers.
The announcement comes a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Rome.
The Italian Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, announced at the end of the Council of Ministers the release of ten million euros
"to begin to create in our capital"
a museum of the Shoah, already
"present in all the major capitals of Europe"
but which took a quarter of a century to materialize in Italy.
Very symbolically, the museum will be built on land adjoining the park of Villa Torlonia, which was the residence of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, in power from 1922 to 1943.
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Like other European capitals
This announcement was welcomed by the Jewish community of Rome, its president Ruth Dureghello however calling in a press release for "
choices that can be made in a short time to guarantee the capital of Italy a museum like all the major European capitals
".
The Shoah museum should "
be an instrument of education for democracy, for pluralism (...) because unfortunately we see that things that we considered as acquired and as definitive conquests are not
", explained Friday to AFP the architect in charge of the project, Luca Zevi, specifying that the museum should see the light of day “
in three years
” at most.
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The enterprise of extermination of the Jews of Europe carried out by Hitler's Germany, which claimed at least six million victims, also affected Rome, where there was one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe.
On October 16, 1943, German troops supported by civil servants from the fascist regime raided the ancient ghetto of Rome.
1023 Jews were deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
Giorgia Meloni commemorated this "tragic day"
last year
by paying tribute to the victims of
"Nazi-fascist fury"
.
President of the Senate and controversial co-founder of Fratelli d'Italia, Ignazio La Russa, also spoke of "
one of the darkest pages of our history
" and expressed for the
"his most sincere support"
to the Jewish community.
The persecution of the Jews in Italy had not waited for the direct action of Nazi troops.
Under his regime, Mussolini had a battery of “
racial laws
” adopted in 1938.
This anti-Semitic legislation instituted a whole series of discriminations against Jews: prohibition of access to public service jobs, exclusion of Jewish children from public schools, prohibition of marriage with Italians.