Edith Bruck, winner of the 2021 Stega Giovani Prize, attacks the mayor of Anzio, Candido De Angelis, underlining the city’s nostalgia for fascism and indifference towards the suffering suffered by Jews during the twenty-year period: “Dear Mayor De Angelis, I would be back gladly for the Peace Prize in your city if in the meantime I had not known that merit was denied to one of my coreligionists, Adele di Consiglio. A lonely woman, survivor of the Nazi-fascist barbarism that destroyed her family like mine. Instead, honorary citizenship was reconfirmed to Mussolini who still has many followers in his territory and beyond, but in Europe itself which has little memory ». A letter in which Bruxk refused the Peace Prize.
The poet and writer – to whom the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella conferred the honor of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic – survived the concentration camps. On February 20, 2021, she received a visit from Pope Francis at her home and at the age of 90 she won the Strega Giovani 2021 Award with ‘Il pane perduto’ (La nave di Teseo). I write and testify in Italian schools, an arduous and tiring task, without hatred towards anyone, indeed in the name of peace and human brotherhood, having had the visit of Pope Francis who asked me for forgiveness extended to the martyr people, I owe your fidelity to me herself and for her solidarity with Mrs. Di Consiglio (whom I don’t know), I thank you but I cannot accept the Peace Prize where the active nostalgia of the most shameful era is in turmoil, indelible for those who lived it “underlines in the letter la Bruck.