Brussels, 29 January 2020  – “We need to bow before the victims of the Shoah, we must remember because we know Auschwitz was build by Europeans. We have to hold upon our shoulders this paternity, because what happened there causes us to face the responsibility.” said EU Parliament president David Sassoli who before the ceremony in Brussels for the 75th Anniversary from Auschwitz liberation by the Red Army, welcomed Auschwitz survivor Liliana Segre.

An Italian Senator for life, Segre, 90 years old, signed on a memory book with the sentence ‘What an emotion! I do exist and the EU Parliament as well’, adding “this was not in someone’s plans”. Segre was threatened few weeks ago by neo-fascists in her city of origin, Milan where right on the remembrance day (27 January) another anti-semitic attack took place.

Later her testimony moved MEPs: “We ate snow in order to drink water wherever there was snow that wasn’t blood”; it was a flash, a moment of the march of the death.  

“People still ask me how is it possible antisemitism still exists. Antisemitism has always existed, it’s just that politics enact this in the circular course of history”.

She tells a silent audience in an unwritten discourse that follows the emotional flow of memories that gave us the ultimate meaning of a united Europe: “When I’ve arrived I saw all the coloured flags at the entrance; so many countries here in  spirit of brotherhood where people speak straight and look into each other eyes. But this hasn’t been  always that way”.