“Leave Primo Levi to our memory,” implored Di Segni.
“Have the dignity to express your thoughts without offending the memory of the survivors and look for quotations elsewhere.”
Di Segni’s comments came in response to the news of the march organised by Palestinian students in Rome on Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday and the use of a quotation from Primo Levi to announce the event.
“The hatred and racial supremacy of that time gave rise to the Shoah,” continued Di Segni.
“Islamic extremism generates terrorism, which today also reaches Europe and worms its way with these forms of reversal and support,” she added.
Earlier on Tuesday the Movement of Palestinian Students announced that they have organised a protest march on Saturday to “expose the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of a system ... that beats its chest over the victims of a genocide that has already taken place while turning an indifferent and complicit eye on a genocide that is underway”.
“We respect the victims of the Shoah, but January 27 as it is currently structured is the tomb of truth, justice and coherence,” they wrote.
They then quoted Primo Levi’s If This is a Man: “If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Consciences can be seduced and obscured again - even our consciences.”
ANSA
