Holocaust survivor under guard amid racist threats
An 89-year-old Italian woman who survived the Holocaust has been given police protection after receiving a barrage of anti-Semitic threats.
Liliana Segre, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 13, has been receiving up to 200 hate messages a day.
The torrent of abuse accelerated after Segre, who is a member of the Italian senate, last week called for parliament to set up a committee to combat racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred.
Although the motion passed, it was opposed by parties on Italy’s Right, including the hard-Right League, led by Matteo Salvini, the former deputy prime minister, and Forza Italia, led by three-times premier Silvio Berlusconi. The farRight Brothers of Italy party also abstained from the vote.
The parties said they were concerned that the establishment of the commission could be used to justify pushing an anti-nationalist agenda and censorship of the Right. But their opposition was criticised by
Jewish
Vatican.
Segre said it made her feel ‘‘like a Martian’’ in the senate. Ruth Dureghello, the president of Rome’s Jewish community, called it ‘‘dismaying’’.
The vote led to hundreds of antiSemitic messages being directed at Segre on social media. A neo-Nazi group displayed a banner at an event where the senator was making an appearance. Police in Milan decided the threats were serious enough to warrant giving her police protection when she attended public events.
An investigation has been launched by the public prosecutor’s office into the hate messages.
‘‘An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor under guard symbolises the danger that Jewish communities still face in Europe today,’’ Dror Eyda, Israel’s ambassador to Italy, wrote on Twitter.
‘‘It must be said that Liliana receives vastly more messages of support and solidarity than she does hate messages,’’ said Paola Gargiulo, Segre’s chief of staff.
Segre was one of 776 Italian children under the age of 14 who were groups as well as the sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Only 25 survived.
Appointed a senator for life in 2018, she devotes much of her time to visiting schools to recount the horrors of the Holocaust. She said people who sent her anti-Semitic messages ‘‘should be pitied or treated’’.