What was meant to be a gesture of pacification has, on the contrary, reignited controversies…
A few days before the Day of Remembrance, the letter of apology from Emanuele Filiberto, on behalf of the Italian royal family of the time, the House of Savoy, whose King Victor Emmanuel III signed the racial laws proposed by the Fascist government in 1938, did not have the desired effect: the Jewish Community of Rome acknowledged the gesture but nothing more.
Here is the statement from the Roman Jewish community: «We take note of Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia’s declarations.
«What happened with the racial laws, in the midst of a long collaboration with a dictatorship, is an offense to Italians, Jews, and non-Jews, which cannot be erased and forgotten. The silence on these facts by the descendants of this House, which lasted more than eighty years, is an additional aggravating circumstance. The descendants of the victims have no authority to forgive, and it is not up to Jewish institutions to rehabilitate people and events whose historical judgment is etched in our country’s history. In addition to the signature that sanctioned discrimination, paving the way for extermination, there was, as the note says, a «collaboration with the dictatorship.» And a very long silence, nearly a century of reticence, that weighs heavily and aggravates the faults.»
A very long silence weighs heavily, as also explained by Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, who speaks of «an initiative that should be considered as strictly personal, each responsible for their actions and with their own conscience. »
For him, «Accounts with history remain open. The memory of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis cannot be erased, nor that of the 7,500 Italian victims. In his letter, Emanuele Filiberto «officially and solemnly requested forgiveness.» But it is precisely this forgiveness that cannot be granted. Emanuele Filiberto should have known that a Jew cannot forgive «on behalf of others.» In Judaism, only sins personally suffered can be forgiven.»
