Tensions in the Rome ghetto, the Jewish community chases out the ANPI

Out, out", "shame on you". Insults and shouts against the ANPI, until the delegation was removed from the ceremony space. Tension is high in the Rome ghetto, where the commemoration of the anniversary of the roundup of the Jews on 16 October 1943 took place. Some members of the Jewish community contested the presence of the partisans, after in recent days the president Victor Fadlun had asked the association not to participate. The delegation of the ANPI, led by the provincial president Marina Pierlorenzi, was therefore placed behind some barriers.

"We were attacked", reported Pierlorenzi. As a sign of solidarity, other associations present at the commemoration sided with them: among these Aned, the association of former deportees to Nazi camps, Fiap and the national association of war victims. The request to exclude the ANPI had already been made by Fadlun in the previous days. "We asked the ANPI not to attend as a matter of respect", reiterated the president of the Roman Jewish Community, explaining that the decision was born from the wound caused by the expulsion of the Jewish Brigade from the April 25 march and from the "condescension of the ANPI towards the pro-Pal squares". "Their presence was not welcome", in the face of "one of the most painful pages in our history, the day of the roundup and deportation of 1,022 Jews to the extermination camps: only sixteen returned and no children", Fadlun said, claiming the removal of the delegation and extending the request for exclusion to other celebrations dedicated to the memory and the fight against Nazi-fascism.

The response of the partisan association is clear: it was "a verbal attack with threats and insults" and it ensured that the delegation remained in the square together with the other associations and will do so in the future by attending and being a "motor" in the places of the Resistance. "We are not intimidated", underlined the association, announcing that it will shortly ask for a meeting with the mayor Roberto Gualtieri and the prefect. Gualtieri today, at the celebration called by the Municipality, arrived at the Jewish neighborhood after the ANPI delegation had already been sent away, without commenting on the incident.

The Avs of Rome and the Province showed solidarity, condemning the episode. The journalist Gad Lerner, on social media, instead writes that he hopes that "some member of the Jewish Community of Rome, if not - as would be right - the national president of the Ucei, wants to publicly protest against those who today boasted of having ousted the ANPI. Without realizing, through ignorance and sectarianism, that they have caused an offense to Italian Jews". Solidarity and closeness also renewed by Aned which defines the protest as "violent and deplorable". "If then the president of the Community of Rome - stated Aned - feels more at ease not in the company of those who have always fought the deporters, but of the representatives of political forces whose youth groups praise the ovens of Auschwitz, this is clearly a problem his."