SHOAH: REMEMBERING IS GOOD FOR THE HEALTH OF THE WORLD

January 27, 2021 "Remembrance Day" - international commemoration of the victims of Nazi-fascism

On January 27, 1945, the troops of the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, revealing the horrors of the Shoah to the world. "Participating in this day of Remembrance - says the President of Cittaslow International, Mauro Migliorini, Mayor of Asolo (I) Cittaslow - is a specific duty for those who, like us, Mayors and citizens of the Cittaslow, are committed daily to" building a future of good live "for all". Memory is a duty for everyone today”. We remember that in Hitler's camps, 6 million Jews, 500,000 Roma and Sinti, 3 million Slavs were put to death. And yet handicapped, poor stragglers, homosexuals, political and non-political opponents of Nazi-Fascism, whether they were freedom fighters and partisans, anarchists, socialists, Christians, Catholics, Communists, even repentant Nazis or Fascists: it is "the banality of evil" by Hannah Arendt, those who opposed totalitarianism were killed following a precise industrial plan of death.

We bow today and we deeply respect with silence the pain of those who have lived this experience beyond good and evil and the cosmic mourning of the affected families and peoples, first of all the Jewish one. A story that marks and will indelibly mark the history of the West and the legacy of the last century. Let's listen very well to the stories of the last living witnesses who were then children who escaped the massacre of the innocents: without hatred they explain to the world what the Shoah was, when ordinarily with three shifts a day, in the concentration camps between the screams of terror, the light of the gas chambers and that of civilization went out in a single blow.

Cittaslow also and above all teaches in times of lockdown that even the "virus" of collective indifference is potentially deadly, erodes social relationships, alienates individuals, hinders participation and, last but not least, risks wearing out democratic institutions. By strengthening all the processes of active citizenship and collective social responsibility it will be possible to reverse the course and finally enter a better and just future for all. Slow down, not lock down!