The Jewish Brigade and members of the Milan Jewish community were violently insulted and harassed during a parade celebrating the 79th anniversary of Italy’s Liberation Day on Saturday, and ultimately were forced to withdraw under police escort.
Italy’s April 25 Festa della Liberazione is a national holiday marking the end of Nazi-fascist rule and the victory of the Italian Resistance during World War II.
Every year, the Jewish Brigade Group, a military unit of the WWII era made up mostly of Jewish volunteers from Mandatory Palestine who fought as part of the British Army against the Nazis, is honored. Many members of the Jewish community march under the brigade’s banners to commemorate the Jewish soldiers’ role in defeating fascism.
On Saturday, Jewish Brigade and Milan Jewish community members – as well as anti-regime Iranians who were protesting alongside the parade – were excluded from the event by extremist left-wing and pro-Palestine groups wanting to block their passage.
After setting off from Via Boschetto toward Piazza Duomo, the Jewish community members of the Jewish only made it a few hundred meters before they were interrupted by openly antisemitic insults such as “You should have been made into soap.”
The chant invokes Holocaust imagery, when Nazis were said to have made soap from the fat of murdered Jews. Nazi salutes were also reported.
After more than an hour of a standoff, police opened a corridor through the crowd, and the harassed participants were escorted out of the march.
For Emanuele Fiano, an Italian politician and former president of the Jewish Community of Milan, this was his 50th march; his first had been with his father, carrying signs about the concentration camps.
“Today, in Milan, an extremist minority decided who may participate and who may not, and it is a disgrace for the whole country. Someone abandoned us. And I am not speaking about the police. I mean a substantial part of public opinion that is grinding down centuries of coexistence. It is a horrible precedent,” Fiano said.
'A dangerous drift we thought belonged to the past'
Former MP Paola Concia said that it was “unacceptable that on Liberation Day Jews are insulted and expelled from a march,” adding that those words and behaviors evoked “a dangerous drift we thought belonged to the past.”
Davide Romano, director of the Jewish Brigade Museum, said that what happened was “not only a violation of the rights of the Jewish and Iranian communities” but “an institutional and constitutional wound of the gravest kind.”
“The right to commemorate the heroic contribution of the Jewish Brigade to the liberation of Italy from Nazi-fascism – a contribution of blood, sacrifice, and determination – was denied by those who arrogate to themselves a monopoly over memory and the public square.”
Municipal Councilor Daniele Nahum said he had met with the Milan police chief to tell him that the handling of the incident was inadequate.
“While understanding the security reasons that led to the route being diverted, I consider it a defeat for the institutions that the Jewish Brigade was forced to change routes because of the violence of these red fascists,” he said.
Nahum also noted that this was the first time since 1938 that Jewish citizens were prevented from demonstrating as Jews.
“As an Italian, son of a partisan and a Jew, it was a traumatic experience,” Carlo Riva, president of The Italian Federation for Progressive Judaism (FIEP), said.
“I have always believed in progressive values, and I am alarmed by the antisemitic drift that now appears across the political spectrum.”
The Union of Young Jews of Italy said that expelling the Jewish Brigade from the parade was a desecration of the memory of the liberation.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said he found it “shameful and unacceptable that there are still episodes of intolerance and attacks against the Jewish community, as happened in Milan.”
He also thanked the police for the way they managed public order during more than 60 demonstrations that took place across Italy.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said, “If these are the ones who claim to defend freedom and democracy, I’d say we have a problem.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called it “deeply troubling” that, on Italy’s WWII Liberation Day, Jewish participants in Milan were targeted and excluded by violent extremists. It thanked political leaders who have spoken out in condemnation of these “antisemitic and anti-patriotic incidents.”
“Such a shameful exclusion of the Jewish community must never be allowed to happen again,” the ministry said.