Liliana Segre, Ignazio La Russa: Two lives, two Italy

Sometimes politicians write the craziest stories. For example this Thursday in Rome, the first day of the 19th legislative period in the history of the Italian Republic. Two worlds collide, two people each representing a completely different Italy.

Here Liliana Segre (92), honorary senator for life, Auschwitz survivor, victim of fascism, on this day the senior president of the Senate. There Ignazio Benito La Russa (75), veteran of the Italian right, sponsor and companion of Giorgia Meloni, figurehead of the Fratelli d’Italia, the party that has its roots in post-fascist Italy.

Segre, La Russa: There is no better way to describe the range of current Italian politics. But first things first.

Second highest office in the state

The scene on this cloudy, rainy day in Rome is the Palazzo Madama, an imposing building in the city center just a few steps from Piazza Navona. The first and most important agenda item on this day: the election of the Senate President. It is the second highest office in Italian politics. If the president fails, the president of the small chamber takes a turn. He must then temporarily take over the business of the head of state.

One person in particular would have liked to take on this prestigious post: Silvio Berlusconi. But the September 25 election result was too clear for the former prime minister to lay claim to.

Instead of the former “Cavaliere”, Giorgia Meloni now dominates the headlines. It is up to her, the winner of the election, to find suitable politicians for the control centers in parliament and government. That of the Senate should now be occupied by La Russa. The election succeedsMeloni’s first personnel decision is crowned with success.

La Russa is “a patriot, a civil servant, a man who is in love with Italy,” says Meloni after the votes have been counted. However, his election comes about in a somewhat curious way. The right-wing camp is divided, most senators abstain from Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, and La Russa even needs a few votes from the opposition to reach its goal. Apparently, in Berlusconi’s party they are of the opinion that Meloni will ignore them when it comes to filling ministerial posts.

La Russa politely thanks everyone, promises to become the president of all forces represented in the Senate, even quoting former president and partisan Sandro Pertini, an icon of the Italian left.

Otherwise, however, La Russa is considered a political roughneck who likes to bicker with his opponents. Having grown up in the post-fascist youth movement, the criminal defense lawyer from Sicily takes part in all the moltings of the Italian right-wing. He soon became a member of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which was founded in 1946 by former Mussolini officials. He later supported the modernization and reestablishment of the MSI under the name Alleanza Nazionale (AN) and distanced himself from fascism. Between 2008 and 2011 he held the post of defense minister under Berlusconi. La Russa has a collection of Mussolini busts in his home in Milan, as a video of the “Corriere della Sera” shows.

Rejection at the Swiss border

Of the The contrast to Liliana Segre could not be greater. Raised in Milan as the daughter of a Jewish businessman and a mother who died young, she set off with her father for Switzerland in 1943 to seek safety there. However, the Swiss border officials turned them away, they had to turn back, were finally arrested and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 1944 with over 700 other Jewish prisoners, where most of them, including their father, were sent to the gas chambers. Liliana survived and at the end of January 1945 was finally sent on a so-called death march towards Germany, where she stayed until the end of the war. She only began to tell her story about thirty years ago, she goes to schools and appears on podiums. In 2018, President Sergio Mattarella appointed her a senator for life.

Her appearance in the Senate gets her a standing ovation. Commemorating the centenary of the October 27, 1922 March on Rome and Mussolini’s accession to power, she says: “In my day, school started in October, and it’s impossible for me not to feel a kind of dizziness when I remember the same little girl who, on a day like this in 1938, was forced by racist laws to leave her elementary school desk empty. And today this girl even finds herself on the most prestigious bench in the Senate.”

She, of all people, is in charge of the procedure that will bring Ignazio La Russa to the head of the Senate. After his election, Ignazio La Russa presents Liliane Segre with a bouquet of flowers. La Russa received 116 votes, while Liliane Segre, who was not up for election, received two.