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Chukkat - Balak - Num. 19-1/25-9
Anna Segre’s speech for January 27, 2026, in the Sala Rossa
Never again.
What happened to the Jews must never happen again, not to Jews or anyone else.
We have repeated it for decades, and we repeat it today; we will never stop repeating it.
It was repeated when there was still relatively little talk about what Italian Jews had suffered, and the Jews themselves spoke relatively little about it, as if they did not want to stand out.
We repeat it today in a city teeming with events, often of the highest caliber, on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and beyond. A city rich in initiatives aimed at fostering interreligious dialogue, such as the Interfaith Committee or, in recent months, the Table of Hope.
Yet anti-Semitism, on a worrying rise, is also felt in this city: a poisonous climate manifesting itself on social media and in daily life, particularly in schools and universities, to the point that some Jewish students and teachers prefer to keep their identities hidden. The Jewish community itself was subjected to shouts and insults on April 24th at the torchlight procession celebrating the Liberation, a moment doubly significant for Jews because it represents not only, as for everyone else, the defeat of Nazism and Fascism and the return of democracy, but also the end, at least in Italy, of the horrors we remember today and in these days. Feeling rejected in that very context was therefore doubly painful.
Paradoxically, this does not happen for a lack of memory: sometimes those who insult Jews, or refuse to remember the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day, believe, even in good faith, that they are acting precisely in the name of the principle “never again for the Jews, never again for anyone else.”
This is a tragic mistake: the sacrosanct principle “never again for anyone” must be nourished by memory, not opposed, exploited, or distorted. “Never again for anyone” must foster dialogue and mutual respect, not call them into question. In a democratic community, there are no alternatives to the memory of what has happened; there can be no alternatives to dialogue and civil coexistence.
Thanks to all those who continue to believe in us.
