It was a long interview that Senator for Life Liliana Segre gave to the program In Onda on La7. In recent days, a preview was published that contained her response to the Fanpage investigation on the young neo-fascists of Fratelli d’Italia.
“I followed this session on various broadcasts, let’s call it that, also praising “Sieg Heil”, therefore also with these Nazi mottos that unfortunately I remember directly and not by hearsay. Now at my age will I have to see this again? Will I have to be kicked out of my country from which I have already been kicked out once?”, Segre said regarding the broadcast images of racist and anti-Semitic insults by some members of the National Youth of Giorgia Meloni’s party.
It is a Liliana Segre who does not hesitate to take a stand by answering the questions of the journalist Marianna D’Aprile. In the interview she addresses various topics from anti-Semitism, to October 7, passing through feminism and her relationship with the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.
On October 7th and the war in Gaza
“I didn’t expect this immediate revenge. I am a woman of peace, I didn’t need to mature about revenge. Even though, when I needed revenge, immediately after the end of the war, I was a 14-year-old girl and now I’m a 93-year-old woman, but it’s stronger than me. I am a woman of peace. The children of both continue to torment me. Hostages who don’t return, Palestinians who are killed every day”, said Segre.
“When I heard about October 7, I felt like I used to. I would have liked those unwatchable images to have been broadcast much more because they were forgotten too quickly. But from my strictly personal point of view, with my story, even as a mother, as a grandmother, those children not guilty of anything except existing, had affected me to such an extent… I never would have thought that I would suffer so much in the following days. I did not expect this immediate revenge. I am a woman of peace”, reiterated the senator for life. Firm and direct more than ever.
The war in Gaza has also increased anti-Semitic incidents in the West, but according to Segre there has always been a strong anti-Semitic sentiment even if «concealed, hidden» «and this was the perfect opportunity to fire it off in all respects and in all environments».
«Young people ignorant of history»
There is a strong desire to leave something to these generations who are unable to remember, but who need to have tools to cultivate memory.
“At the beginning it seemed so difficult that I wouldn’t have been able to tell the story of Auschwitz, and in fact you never tell everything. All the witnesses didn’t find the words to do so,” Segre said. “From the shyness of the very first times, with 20-30 kids, I arrived at speaking calmly in front of 5,000 as if they were 5 or 50. And I was rarely disappointed. Now I believe that most of these kids, so different from those I had in front of me until I was 3-4 years old, are above all very ignorant of history. Partly because it isn’t taught, partly because of life. A kid today knows nothing of what happened yesterday and can’t even worry about what will happen tomorrow. He worries about what he will do in the moment. This scares me a lot, because the future has to be planned, and everyone must have a self-confidence that these kids don’t have.”
“A woman must be free”
It is a feminist Liliana Segre who tells her story to Marianna D’Aprile. “A woman must be free,” said the senator.
“She must not trust a man who touches her, except in a loving way. A young woman must be very sure of herself, never be anyone’s slave. The first time someone does the slightest thing, even a little pat on the cheek, the woman must send that person away. She must not trust a man who touches her, except in a loving way. The woman must be free, she must work and not depend on anyone. Economic independence is very important, even learning a trade if you don’t have a degree.”
“I liked the anonymity”
Liliana Segre also spoke about her life before entering the Senate and the media exposure that led to her receiving anti-Semitic insults and threats, so much so that she needed an escort. “I was nobody and in fact I really liked the anonymity, I felt free, I felt like anyone walking down the street. My daughter, the youngest, was always with me. This doesn’t happen anymore, because the amount of insults, insults, threats, frightening swear words directed at me that I wanted to ignore, was not possible because Lamorgese, then Minister of the Interior, told me ‘you must have an escort’. I fought but she forced me”.
Responding to those who ask if the threats she has received also depend on the fact of being a woman, Segre adds: “Surely the fact of being a woman encourages these sick characters who insult to invent things that are part of a fantasy that is sometimes chauvinistic and ignorant, sometimes morbid fantasies. Some are women who insult other women, old women, and they are people who need to be treated. I worry about them, whether they are male or female.”
“Woe would happen if Mattarella were not there”
On her relationship with the President of the Republic: “I respect Mattarella so much, indeed I love him like a brother, I am grateful to him, I like him as crooked as he is, he is a wonderful man, in the right place, woe betide if he wasn’t there. But he has nothing to do with this. I know it and he knows it very well. I don’t want to and I can’t keep quiet, I can also say something that Mattarella doesn’t think, but it is never Mattarella who puts things in my mouth to say in the Senate, absolutely not.”
Was it said because she is a woman? “I am very feminist, undoubtedly the woman in a Latin country like this is always seen as someone who is not at the same level as the man and I don’t know how many more centuries it will take before each of us takes her place in the world. It may also be that there is this side, I would not like to feel it. I prefer to think that men have not thought this.”
Today, what worries Liliana Segre more than ever is the “very dangerous desire of the right to have just one person in command.”
© Reproduction reserved
