“The Charter is the main anchor for the unity of our country”. On Tuesday 24 January, the speech of the senator for life at Palazzo Madama will be published in volume by Einaudi
“In this month in which the centenary of the march on Rome falls, which gave rise to the fascist dictatorship, it is precisely up to someone like me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy which is the Senate of the Republic”. It’s October 13, 2022: Liliana Segre speaks at Palazzo Madama at the opening of the new legislature. Survivor of the Holocaust, now senator for life, that day she assumes the provisional presidency of the Chamber as the most senior member (given the unavailability of Giorgio Napolitano) and gives a speech of the highest historical and civil value, which deserves to be read and re-read today and in the future.
Einaudi has published it in volume, with the careful care of Daniela Padoan, and it will arrive the day after tomorrow in the bookstore, in the week in which Remembrance Day is celebrated (January 27). Title: The polar star of the Constitution (which also contains another unpublished text that we anticipate here). And in fact, Liliana Segre affirms in her speech, «in Italy the main anchor around which the unity of our people must manifest itself is the republican Constitution, which, as Piero Calamandrei said, is not a piece of paper, but the testament of one hundred thousand dead who fell in the long struggle for freedom; a struggle that did not begin in September 1943 but which ideally sees Giacomo Matteotti as the leader». And again, shortly after, the reference is to article 3 of our Charter, which bans any discrimination based on “sex, race, language, religion, political opinions, personal and social conditions”.
An even more profound reminder if it is pronounced by those who have suffered those discriminations on their own skin up to the extreme consequences, experiencing firsthand “how easy it is to pass from words to deeds”. A witness who saw absolute evil but who chose to remain “a free and peaceful woman”. And to always spend himself, first for thirty years in schools and then in institutions. This is demonstrated by the commitment with which, in 2019, Liliana Segre proposed and obtained the establishment of an extraordinary commission to combat the phenomena of intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred and violence (which, with the green light unanimous vote of the Senate last Thursday, will also be reconstituted in this legislature).
In the speech contained in the book, Senator encourages a high and noble policy, calls for the preservation of democratic institutions and the centrality of Parliament, recommends social cohesion and underlines the unifying, not divisive value of civil anniversaries, citing April 25, Liberation Day, May 1, Labor Day, June 2, Republic Day.
To enrich the volume, an in-depth and documented essay by Daniela Padoan. «The wound inflicted on trust, so necessary, in the community of men from which it was wanted to be expelled – observes the curator -, was soothed in Liliana Segre by a secular religion, in the deepest etymological sense of religious“to gather”, and del to connect“to choose”: faith in democracy and in the Constitution, a legacy to be honored without ever forgetting its cost, which makes the Republic have the duty to defend everyone, protect them, assure them equal rights».
January 21, 2023 (change January 21, 2023 | 19:51)
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