ROME, JAN 27 – The voices of the ‘heralds of memory’ as Liliana Segre calls them, are less and less. For personal reasons, the witnesses of the unspeakable are now very few. There are those who have made the testimony of the extermination camp a life mission, a huge effort to devote to those who have not survived, publicly documenting that experience, experiencing the pain a thousand times over and then there are those who have tried to survive in silence. For this reason, it is not easy to take into account who in Italy came out alive from Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other death chambers for the craziest of projects: the extermination of a ‘race’ and of those who were different – homosexuals, the disabled, Roma – and political opponents. On January 27, Remembrance Day, this harrowing plight of Holocaust survivors prompts an account of who is still there. In Italy, alongside tireless people on the front lines like Segre, Sami Modiano, Edith Bruck, there are few others and it is right to talk about them too. Here are the 17 names, 13 Jews, in a ‘partial’ list: SAMI MODIANO, 92 years old; EDITH BRUCK, 91; LILIANA SEGRE, 92 years old; STELLA LEVI, 100 years old on May 4th; ALBERTO ISRAEL, 95 years old; the sisters of Fiume ANDRA AND TATIANA BUCCI, respectively 83 and 85 years old; ARIANNA SZÖRÉNYI, 89, also from Fiume; DIAMANTINA VIVANTE THESSALONIKI, 94 years old; GOTHS BAUER, 98 years old ; GILBERTO SALMONI, 95 years old; STELLA DANA, Milanese, 95 years old; HANNA KLUGER WEISS, born in Rijeka, 94 years old. And then again LOREDANA BULGARELLI, 97 years old former partisan relay. MICHELE MONTAGNANO, 101 years old, ex soldier; MIRELLA STANZIONE, anti-fascist, 96 years old in March and ELISEO MORO, 95 years old, ex partisan. (HANDLE).
(ANSA)
