1990s

NEDO FIANO: “When these laws were passed in 1938 we were horrified by the behaviour of our neighbours, who lived with us in the same building or in the same street. We saw them looking away, or looking at us as if we were not there, as if we did not exist… These laws affected your neighbour, the people who lived next door, the people you spent happy and sad days with, the people you had fun with, the people you invited to lunch, the people you went places with… And then over! From one day to the next, the most complete darkness, the deepest silence.”

PIETRO TERRACINA: “My teacher told me: ‘leave the class because from now on you are not allowed to stay here, in this school’.”

DORA VENEZIA: “I was told I had to go to secondary school but I wasn’t allowed. So, I went to work as a dressmaker. I would walk to work with books under my arm and pretend I was going to school.”

PIETRO TERRACINA: “I remember as if it were today that when I left the class, I went to the cleaning lady and cried in her arms. She was very gentle with me, she tried to advise me, to console me. Then I went home, I told my father but he had expected it.”

DORA VENEZIA: “I felt disappointed because I had… I don’t know… warm feelings towards my country, Italy. When I was told I had to leave beause I was Jewish, I didn’t realise exactly what was so different about Judaism because for me it was a religion. I was still Italian.”

GOTI HERSKOVITZ: “We knew there were organizations in Milan that helped people to escape to Switzerland. We approached one that, unfortunately, didn’t keep its promise made to those who asked for help. This bridge was made of wood, it was small. We thought we were already safe and it seemed impossible [to be betrayed], after so many hopes and illusions of being safe, after being robbed of all our belongings to pay the exorbitant sums that these organizations were asking to take us to safety.”

LILIANA SEGRE: “We were thrown violently from the trucks in front of the waiting train. The descent from the trucks and the ascent into the wagons took us only a few seconds. We were horrified by such a scene, an incredible scene: these cattle wagons with open doors, waiting for us.”

ALESSANDRO KROO: “The trip seemed to be endless, the air was unbreathable, because the old people and a handicapped lady couldn’t even reach the hole to defecate in or to attend to their needs, so there was excrement everywhere.”

LILIANA SEGRE: “We were desperate in the first phase, people were crying, not only the children, who were distressed from being shut in, from not being able to move – everybody was crying. Then, many began praying. I remember very well some men gathered in the middle of the cattle wagon who were bowing and praying. And then, hardly anybody cried or prayed anymore. I remember that in the very last days a great silence descended upon us, a very solemn silence, an essential silence. Many of us were almost at death’s door.”

ROMEO RUBINO SALMONI: “Now that I have 10 grandchildren, thanks to God, I remember the time I saw a train bringing about 200 small children, who were holding rag dolls. They were heading for… for the crematoria. For the next two days, the flame burned high over the crematorium, about two metres high. They were burning the tender flesh of Jewish children. We could smell it. It spread all over the camp.”

BISIACH: “The Italians helped the Jews a lot. But it seems that there are also Italian responsibilities. Let us now listen to a historian, our historian Prof. Giovanni De Luna, on what may have been the responsibility of the Italians in this extermination of the Jews in the lagers.”

DE LUNA: “Yes, there is a stereotype of Italian good people on which we should ask ourselves a little more thoroughly. There is no doubt that the Italian people, in relation to the deportation of the Jews, offered numerous examples of impulses of great generosity and great solidarity. There is no doubt that there were thousands and thousands of Italians who then risked their lives to host and protect Jews wanted by the Germans. There is no doubt that also our authorities, like in in the occupied France, in southern France, did their best to ensure that the situation of the Jews was not intolerable. But on the other side, it must be said frankly, there were many delations, there were many denunciations and, above all, there was the institutional involvement of the Republic of Salò. When nowadays some people go through biographies like Ciano’s, lingering complacently on his benevolence towards the Jews, well, one has to be very careful here. The deportation of Italian Jews, starting from the one we saw in this video, that of the Jews of Rome on October 16, could not have taken place without the direct involvement of the authorities of the Republic of Salò. The Germans were not able to set up the railway trains, they were not able to make these trains travel, they were not able to take care of the logistical infrastructures of the extermination, of the deportation. The fascist authorities intervened on this ground. So from this point of view there was a very close congruence between Hitler’s will to exterminate and the complicity of the Republic of Salò in carrying out this extermination.”