At the end of a meeting of Italian ex-deportees to Nazi Germany held at the Casa della Memoria in Milan, Vera Michelin Salomon read out an appeal, in the name of all present, by the survivors of the Nazi camps to the youth of today. Dozens of survivors participated in the event, from all the main Nazi concentration camps.
During his concluding remarks, ANED vice-president Dario Venegoni promised on behalf of the association that it would take this noble appeal seriously, and that it would place it at the centre of the work that it conducts with young people.
The appeal made by the survivors reads as follows:
APPEAL BY SURVIVORS OF THE NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS
ON THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF LIBERATION
We, the survivors of the horrors of the Nazi camps – each one of us with their own story, their own beliefs and their own convictions – have come together on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Liberation and the end of the Second World War to reaffirm the values that we have long sustained during the painful process of bearing witness to those events: peace, freedom of thought, equality, mutual respect, solidarity, justice and democracy. These values form the legacy of those comrades who never returned from the concentration camps.
Even today, those values are trampled underfoot every day across the world, and we are concerned that the generations who will follow us will have to re-discover them, and maybe at a high price.
But we still hope that our words will not be in vain.
Understanding of the terrible events of the 20th century should not pass away with the memories of individual survivors, but must be passed on, enriched by education and research above all in our schools, and must continue to serve as a fount of knowledge of the importance of democracy, and as a bulwark against future barbarism.
The European ideal was born in the 1930s in the places where anti-fascists found themselves exiled or interned, and was (paradoxically) reinforced in the huge melting pot of nationalities imprisoned in the German camps. Therefore, we ask the relevant international bodies – European and global – to ensure that the camps, these places of pain and sadness where the Nazi extermination programme took place, be officially recognised by UNESCO as “World Heritage Sites”.
Above all, however, we look to the young boys and girls of Italy, of today and tomorrow: fight against indifference and conformism; pay attention to public life, if you do not want others to do it for you; recognise and reject all forms of racism, discrimination, abuse of power and violence; defend democracy, the Constitution and freedom against all authoritarian tendencies. And never again allow men and women to be persecuted for their origins, ideas or beliefs.
Casa della Memoria, Milan, 3 May 2015
(Traslation by Corey Dimarco)
