Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues, members of government, friends,First of all, I would like to thank the Swedish government for having organized this International Forum on the Holocaust.

This constitutes an extraordinary opportunity to reflect upon that great tragedy which lies behind us. I would like to stress one core value, the value of remembrance.

Remembrance as a crucial element for the upbringing of the new generations to whom we bequeath the history of the past, and turn over responsibility for a future in common.

Remembrance as an indispensable lever for a peaceful and democratic Europe.

Democratic Italy cannot do without remembrance. Democratic Italy must not forget that our country is not only the country of Villa Emma di Nonantola to which Professor Bauer referred. Italy was the country of Mussolini, the country whose entrails spawned fascism in Europe. Woe upon us if we were to forget this lesson of history.

I would first like to recall the words of Primo Levi, one of the greatest Italian authors of the century past. These words are engraved on the Italian Pavilion at Auschwitz, and should be known by heart to each one of us and to our children: "Visitors”, Primo Levi admonishes us, ”look upon the vestiges of this camp and meditate: from wherever you may come, you are not an outsider. See to it that your journey is not in vain, that our death has not been in vain. The ashes of Auschwitz are a warning for you and your children: make sure that the horrendous fruits of hatred whose traces you have seen here, produce no new seeds, neither tomorrow, nor ever again.

I believe it is from the viewpoint of these words that we must look upon the Shoah: a European tragedy which belongs neither to a single place not to a single period of time. Not only to the past; a past ever in the forefront of our awareness, but which could surface anew in new forms.

In fact, this has already happened. In different forms, certainly, in specific forms, certainly. But how can we help but think of Primo Levi’s words about the seeds of hatred in the face of the efforts to perpetrate ethnic cleansing we have seen during the last few years - I’d just mention the most extreme example, genocide in Rwanda - and at the same time ask ourselves what the international community was able to accomplish?

This is the reason why I believe we should not entrust the task of handing down remembrance of the Shoah solely to the survivors and the descendants of the victims (Jews, gypsies, opponents of Nazism).

We are all involved, no one can feel aloof.

We are all involved because if we are not successfully in the daily battle against intolerance, racism, forms of exasperated nationalism and manifestations of religious fundamentalism, the tragic events of both yesteryear and the present will tend to be repeated. And hopelessly undermined will be the sole credible project upon which the hopes of a united and peaceful Europe may be grounded: a project of democratic coexistence among different cultures, religions and ethnics, the project of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies.

For this reason, remembrance bears such a decisive weight for our future in common.

However, if this is so, remembrance needs vigilance, requires solid historical bases, and has to be both cultivated and spread.

Allow me to evoke Primo Levi once again, and refer to the unpublished text of a statement he was supposed to deliver before Congress of the Union of Jewish Communities in 1982. In that statement he sustained the importance of maintaining the thrust of historical research, and took to task "revisionist" efforts: Primo Levi sensed that the fact of the lagers becoming more distant in time was causing historically negative effects. ”If the world could be convinced that Auschwitz never existed it would be easier to construct a second Auschwitz, and” he concluded, ”there is no assurance it would devour Jews alone".

In fact, I don’t believe we should harbor illusions that there are only isolated fringe groupings of revisionists, negators and nostalgics.

And even were this the case, ever with us is the risk of indifference on the part of people at large; fertile ground for the growth of intolerance. Then again, the lesson we learn from the Shoah is the extent of the weight brought to bear by indifference. And the only remedy to indifference is a sense of responsibility, individual and collective responsibility, the responsibility of each person and of all together.

Therefore, essential is the task incumbent upon us to hand down to new generations complete information relative to the facts of history, and to educate their judgement ability with suitable instruments. Only in this way, through conscious encounter with historical remembrance, will we be able to stave off the risk of an attitude of indifference towards the present, and, on the contrary, cultivate the sense of individual responsibility.

The battle to preserve and develop those values of civilization and democracy which our generation attained at such a high price is, in the final analysis, a daily battle where conscious knowledge of the past is linked to ready awareness regarding present risks.

Italy has been devoting considerable attention to this subject for years, and particularly so with the new projects relative to studying the history of the 20th century. An endeavor which deserves mention is the project launched in 1998 by the Ministry of Education, ”The 20th Century, Youth and Remembrance”, which has made it possible to involve 500 Italian schools in visits to Nazi camps of extermination. This is an ongoing programme which, in the wake of the increased autonomy exercised by schools, is being flanked by a series of other projects: for example, the archive research work being carried out by a number of Italian schools - with the decisive support of non-governmental associations, including the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation - on the history of schooling under Fascism.
Lastly, I would like to pay tribute to the commitment of the European Jewish Communities and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities in this joint effort for remembrance and against indifference.

For centuries the Jews of Europe were the ”minority”, the ”diverse ones” par excellence, and for this reason were persecuted, humiliated, and shunted aside. Nonetheless, down through the centuries they succeeded in preserving their identity and, at the same time, in becoming an integral part of society around them by interacting with it.

Integration with respect for identities; this is most certainly one of the fundamental democratic challenges which European societies must face in the course of this century.
Only full awareness of the lessons of the past will enable us and our children to tackle this challenge with success. And only if such a challenge is mastered in Europe, will it be within our power and our grasp to be consistent when we place respect for human rights and respect for the rights of minorities at the center of international politics.