Liliana Segre in Arezzo for her last public speech: “I chose life, that’s how I became free” – La Stampa

«In my story there is love, pity, the moving memory of myself, of what I was, of that girl who lost everything and was taken to Auschwitz. That girl of whom I am now a grandmother just as I feel her as the grandmother of all the boys to whom today I will pass the baton of memory …. ».

The applause, very long and warm, replaces the music from Benigni’s film, “Life is beautiful.” That here, in the Citadel of Peace in Rondine, a medieval village fifteen kilometers from Arezzo, becomes the soundtrack of the ideal testament that Liliana Segre has decided to entrust to the young people of this international community that brings together children enemies at home, divided by bloody wars but united, in this idyllic place, in a unique peace project in the world. The senator retraces the story of her childhood and adolescence. The deportation, the humiliations and miseries that Nazism and the fascist racial laws, the denial of the other and the “different” plunged the world into barbarism.

It is here, under a huge white tent, where the senator who survived the death camps, an icon of reconciliation and memory, decided this morning to give her last public speech, collecting the phrases, thoughts and wishes that the students of the Los Institutes from all over Italy have sent them to this event that takes place in the presence of the highest officials of the State and the government: from the Presidents of the Chamber and Senate, Fico and Casellati, to the President of the Conte Council, to Chancellor Di Maio and degli Interni, Lamorgese, to the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Gualtiero Bassetti.

Here, a scene of natural peace will be built, dedicated to the senator and her friend Janine, who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp where they were both deported at age 14. And after receiving the anastic copy of the first edition of the Italian Constitution, sent as a gift by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, the senator will deliver the baton for the defense of memory to the girls and boys who want to welcome him to spread his message of peace. and overcoming hatred. “Here – explained the Milanese Segre – I will close my engagement as a witness to the Shoa”.

All students can be connected in live broadcast on different channels, starting from the website www.miur.gov.it. to be able to hear shortly the words of the senator: “I have chosen life, and I have become free.”