Holocaust Survivor and Life Senator
Liliana Segre got a standing ovation on Thursday as she referred
to the Shoah in a speech as she presided over the first session
in the Senate of the new parliament.
"I am especially excited about the role that today has in store
for me," said the 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor, who is the
provisional president of the Upper House on the basis of
seniority until a new Speaker is elected.
"It has come about that someone precisely like me has to
temporarily take the presidency of this temple of democracy, the
Senate of the Republic, this October, in which falls the 100th
anniversary of the March on Rome that started the Fascist
dictatorship.
"And the symbolic value of this coincidence is amplified in my
mind because, in my day, school started in October.
"And it is impossible for me not to feel a sort of vertigo
recalling that, on a day like this in 1938, that same girl, lost
and full of sorrow, who was forced by the Racial Laws to leave
her elementary school desk empty, is today, due to a strange
twist of destiny, at the most prestigious desk in the Senate".
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