Sergio Mattarella has appointed Senator for life Liliana Segre, deported in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau and survived the horrors of the concentration camp. The decree, countersigned by Premier Paolo Gentiloni, motivates the choice thus: "for having illustrated the homeland with very high merits in the social field".
Liliana's life #Secrets testimony of freedom. As a senator, you will show us the value of memory. A precious decision 80 years after the racial laws
- Paolo Gentiloni (@PaoloGentiloni) January 19, 2018
The President of the Republic informed the new senator, born in Milan in 1930, by telephone. Liliana Segre was freed on May 1945, 2004 thanks to the arrival of the US army. In November XNUMX, on the initiative of the then Head of State Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, she was appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
“The news took me completely by surprise,” commented the Segre. “I've never done active politics and I'm an ordinary person, a grandmother with a life still full of interests and commitments. Certainly the President wanted to honor, through me, the memory of many others in this year 2018 which marks the 80th anniversary of the racial laws".
"Cultivating memory - he continued - is still today a precious vaccine against indifference and helps us, in a world so full of injustice and suffering, to remember that each of us has a conscience and can use it".
