Italian Prime Minister Đorđa Meloni yesterday marked the anniversary of one of the biggest mass crimes from the Second World War, when the Germans occupied parts of Italy, but the main association of Italian partisans criticized her comments.
On March 24, 1944, the Germans shot 335 people in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome in retaliation for Italian partisans killing 33 Nazi soldiers on the streets of Rome.
Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has neo-fascist roots, announced on the occasion of the anniversary of this massacre, that it is up to all Italians to remember the “barbaric” massacre and to teach future generations about what happened.
As she stated, it was “one of the deepest and best wounds” inflicted on Italy, and then “335 innocent Italians were killed just because they were Italians”.
The National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) announced that Meloni “doesn’t remember everything”, and specifically referred to the Prime Minister’s assessment that the victims were killed “only because they were Italian”.
“Yes, they were Italians, but they were selected so that anti-fascists, fighters of the resistance movement, political opponents and Jews would be targeted,” ANPI president Gianfranco Pagliarulo said in a statement.
According to him, the hit list was tailored “in complicity” with the chief of police of the city of Rome, the interior minister of the northern Republic of Salo under the rule of the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and a Nazi war criminal.
“They were all fascists,” Paljarulo said.
MP from the opposition Alliance of Left Greens Nikola Fratojani wrote on Twitter: “Will you one day be able to write the word ‘anti-fascist'”.
During the election campaign, Đorđa Meloni tried very hard to dispel public fears due to the fact that her party was founded on a neo-fascist heritage. She claimed that the Italian right had “consigned fascism to history” and was very outspoken in criticizing the trampling of democracy under Mussolini, as well as the anti-Jewish laws. After becoming prime minister, she met several times with representatives of the Jewish community of Rome.
However, one of the leaders of the Brothers of Italy, the president of the Italian Senate, Ignazio La Rusa, proudly keeps the signs of Mussolini’s rule in his house. On the other hand, he joined the president and other officials at the commemoration of the massacre in the Aredatin Caves.
Asked about her comments, Đorđa Meloni said that she was inclusive, i.e. “all-inclusive” when she called the anti-fascists Italians, the ANSA news agency reported.
The Associated Press agency notes that Italy never went through a process similar to the denazification that was carried out in Germany after the Second World War, so the Italian Social Movement – a neo-fascist party – was part of the first post-war Italian government, and its young member, Đorđa Meloni, joined it. The National Alliance and then the Brothers of Italy later emerged from that party.
(Beta-AP)