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After visiting the concentration camps of Dachau, Ebensee, Gusen and Hartheim Castle – one of the centers of T4, the infamous operation to exterminate the disabled carried out by the Nazi regime – today the boys and girls of the schools of Florence and the Metropolitan City , will take part in the ceremony for the anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where at least 120 thousand people died, including many Italians. Many deportees left from the Santa Maria Novella station.
In Mauthausen people were dying of work, with the chambers and gases, for medical experiments… it was hell. Anti-Nazis, intellectuals, political opponents, antisocials, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, Roma and homosexuals were deported there.
Organized by the Florentine section of Aned, a national association of former deportees to Nazi camps, the pilgrimage was attended by hundreds of participants and students from the municipalities of Impruneta, Bagno a Ripoli, Sesto Fiorentino, Calenzano, Scandicci, Barberino di Mugello, San Casciano Val di Pesa, Barberino Tavarnelle, Signa, Lastra a Signa, Greve in Chianti, Fiesole, Pelago, Rufina, Pontassieve, Dicomano, San Godenzo, Londa, Scarperia and San Piero and Florence.
“I am really proud – declared Alessandra Nardini, regional councilor – to participate in this pilgrimage and to represent the Region for the first time. 80 years after the great strikes of 1944, it seemed to me a duty to accompany the Tuscan students to Mauthausen and take part in the celebrations of the 79th anniversary of the Liberation, visiting this and other Nazi extermination camps.
In a time in which we are witnessing the worrying re-emergence of dangerous Nazi-fascist resurgences, of shameful attempts at denialism and revisionism, it is even more important and necessary to cultivate Memory”.
The pilgrimage, which began on May 2, will continue tomorrow with a visit to the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste, a Nazi concentration camp now on Italian soil.
