The ovation for Liliana Segre, Auschwitz survivor and president of the Italian Senate for a day

“In this month of October, which marks the centenary of the March on Rome, which gave rise to the fascist dictatorship, it is up to someone like me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy that is the Senate of the Republic” . The words of the senator for life, Liliana Segre, 92 years old and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, have been loaded with symbolism. And more after handing over the witness to the new president of the Italian Upper House, the far-right senator, Ignacio La Russa. After presiding over the inaugural plenary session, Segre has been in charge of announcing the name of the person chosen to preside over the Senate: Ignacio La Russa , right hand of the more than probable next head of the Government, the leader of the extreme right, Giorgia Meloni, to preside over the Senate. La Russa was one of the founders of Brothers of Italy and four years ago, he exhibited in an interview on Il Corriere della Sera a room in which he kept relics of the dictatorship, including a figure of Benito Mussolini. In his speech, during the opening of the legislature in the Italian Senate, Segre has invited the legislators to combat hate messages, in a speech interrupted by applause on several occasions and that has put the Hemicycle on its feet in a long and emotional applause. “It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of vertigo when remembering that the same girl who, on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and bewildered, was forced by racist laws to leave her desk empty, today finds herself by a strange destiny until in the most prestigious desk of the Senate”, he added. The first political victory for Meloni The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, appointed her senator for life in 2018 “for having illustrated the Homeland with high merits in the social sphere”. Her efforts in favor of memory sparked insults, attacks and hateful messages on social networks that forced the authorities to protect her with bodyguards in 2019. Two years later, she was appointed president of the Extraordinary Commission to fight intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred and violence. Ignacio La Russa, elected new president of the Italian Senate.ALESSANDRO DI MEOLa Russa was elected with 116 votes, in a first political victory for Giorgia Meloni’s party that, however, has been tarnished for the rudeness of Forza Italia, which has symbolically shown its apparent discomfort with the management of the negotiations to share the position. Meloni has celebrated the election of “a patriot, a servant of the State, a lover of Italy”. Likewise, he recalled that for Brothers of Italy he is “an irreplaceable reference”, to the extent that he contributed to his formation after a political past linked at all times to neo-fascism, reports the RAI network. Segre is the oldest parliamentarian among the vice-presidents of the previous legislature. The rest of the senators for life are the President Emeritus of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, as well as Mario Monti, Elena Cattaneo, Renzo Piano and Carlo Rubbia.