On 27^th January 1945 Red Army troops entered the Nazi concentration and death camp of Auschwitz and came across a scene which remains indelibly etched on the world’s conscience. In 2005 a United Nations resolution instituted an International Holocaust Remembrance Day or ‘Giorno della memoria’ as it’s known here in Italy.

It’s so important to remember the most horrific genocide Europe has ever known, in which almost seven million people were killed purely on the grounds of their ethnicity, their beliefs or their sexual orientation. Forgetting what happened then only encourages further genocides in other parts of the world such as is still occuring today in countries whose names sadly crop up time and time again in the news.

Bagni di Lucca is commemorating this awful part of our history with events throughout the week.

First there’s the commemoration, at Fornoli’s Peace Park, of Liliana Urbach, the only citizen of Bagni di Lucca who died in Auschwitz aged just sixteen months.

For more on Liliana see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/suffer-little-children/

Fascism originally did not uphold racist legislation. It was only after the conquest of Abyssinia and the establishment of the ‘East African Empire’ in 1936 that apartheid began here. Gradually this was extended through the exclusion of Jewish people from education and employment and finally led to the promulgation of racial laws with heavy punishments meted out to those who married into different ethnic groups.

I have an extensive post discussing Italy’s racial laws at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/38053/

(For Italy’s only extermination camp – in Trieste – see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/italys-death-camp/)

The second holocaust event at Bagni di Lucca was the unveiling of a long overdue memorial plaque on the old Terme Hotel which is now crumbling amid grim desolation. It was in this hotel that ninety eight persons from Bagni di Lucca and surrounding areas were ‘concentrated’ before starting their journey to the Auschwitz death factory. Again I’ve dedicated a more-in-depth post on this hotel at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/from-bagni-di-lucca-to-auschwitz/   

In that post I wrote “meanwhile, the sinister and decrepit façade of the old Hotel delle Terme has nothing to show on it that this was the last sight many people would have had of their beloved families and their beautiful country. This, in my opinion, is a scandal that must be rectified as soon as possible. Here is a building that, more than any other in this area, witnessed man’s brutality to man and people pass by it without realizing what purpose it was used for. A memorial plaque should be placed on it now because if we don’t remember……..”

(It’s also horrifically ironic that it was in this same hotel, in happier days that Puccini composed a large part of his wonderful opera, ‘Girl of the Golden West’ in 1909).

I’m glad that this omission has now been rectified.

The memorial plaque reads as follows:

‘Here, at Bagni di Lucca’s hot baths in the old Terme hotel, Italian and foreign jews, arrested in our province by order of the Italian Social Republic, were confined. 98 old, adult and young persons left here on the 23rd of January 1944. Auschwitz was their destination, the result of racial hatred’.

Regarding this incident there are so many unanswered questions. Could anything have been done to save these ninety eight people? Did they know where they were heading to? Was it ignorance or indifference or fright of locals that marked their fateful end? Why was the god, whose temple lies opposite the hotel, so blatantly indifferent to their plight when religious brethren were particularly active and lost their lives in opposing such barbarities? (For example, the exemplary action of Don Aldo Mei – read about him in my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/forgiving-your-executioners-the-story-of-don-aldo-mei/ )

We may never know but we shall never forget!