It was 6 February 1944 when the convoy bound for Auschwitz which left on 30 January 1944 from Milan Central Station arrived in Auschwitz. And just today, 79 years later, a multimedia information totem dedicated to the Holocaust Memorial, at the 21 track, below which is the Memorial. The totem is a project by the Ministry of Culture, the FS Italiane Group and the Shoah Memorial in Milan as a warning not to forget the thousands of people who, between 1943 and 1945, were deported to concentration camps. But above all not to give in to indifference and the banality of evil.
The goal is to encourage travelers to remember and reflect and to invite them to visit the Shoah Memorial. The area where the Memorial stands today was originally used for handling postal wagons and, between 1943 and 1945, it was the place where thousands of Jews and political opponents were loaded onto freight wagons which, after being transported to the floor above tracks, were hooked up to convoys directed to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen and other concentration and extermination camps or the Italian collection camps such as those of Fossoli and Bolzano.
The life senator of the Italian Republic took part in the solemn ceremony Liliana Segre, the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, the CEO of the FS Italiane Group Luigi Ferraris, the president of the Shoah Memorial Foundation in Milan Roberto Jarach, and the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala.
The totem in memory of the victims of the Holocaust
The totem contains directions for reaching the Holocaust Memorial 200 meters from the Central Station, in Piazza Edmond Jacob Safra 1, and a video, produced by the Ministry of Culture also with the contribution of the Istituto Luce – Cinecittà, with the testimony of the deportation in Auschwitz of the then thirteen-year-old Liliana Segre, which took place on January 30, 1944 right from platform 21, she left with her father Alberto towards the concentration camp. "On a day of great pain for me, I want to remind you that even great pains have an end," said the senator for life. "And today is the end for me too, in my station there is finally a point where the hundreds of people are remembered (brave Jews who chose to be anti-regime) and that this signal remains as a reminder of what was - continued Segre – I'm sure that the travelers (few or many) will pass in front of the totem and will have a thought because by now there are very few of us who testify "I was there on platform 21", she concluded.
