President Meloni’s statement on 81st anniversary of the rounding up of Jews in Rome during WWII

On 16 October 81 years ago, Rome witnessed one of the most brutal crimes ever committed in Italy. At dawn, Nazi troops, with the complicity of the Italian fascist regime, started a merciless manhunt and forcibly removed 1,259 innocent people from their homes, deporting them to death camps. Men, women, elderly people and children. No one was spared, and only 16 returned.

As Primo Levi said, “if understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative”. Still today, those words indicate the path to keeping the memory of what happened alive and to renewing our commitment against anti-Semitic hatred, which has been revitalised following Hamas’s brutal attack against the Israeli people on 7 October 2023.

On this anniversary, the Government expresses its closeness to the Jewish Community of Rome and to the relatives and descendants of the deported.

[Courtesy translation]