The mayor of Genoa, Marco Bucci, and the municipal councilor for social services, Lorenza Rosso, signed yesterday two letters of apology to the Jewish Community of Genoa.
The case of the antisemitic joke that Rosso uttered in the Synagogue on Sunday, while delivering the official greetings of the administration, on the occasion of the European Day of Jewish Culture, ends like this. “I have no intention of asking for the resignation of the councilor,” clarifies the mayor Bucci, a resignation instead invoked by all the opposition in the city council. And reiterated yesterday by the Pd group leader, Simone D’Angelo, in commission at Palazzo Tursi, and by the Pd councilor Cristina Lodi who refused “to talk about rights, when the councilor does not clarify the very serious statements he made in the Synagogue”, he said. And the councilor, from the benches of the council, smiled at them and replied: “If I’m here, it means that I haven’t resigned.”
Yesterday morning, in truth, there was a “frank” meeting between the mayor Bucci and the councilor, before 9, in which the corridors recorded the rise of the mayor’s voice, after the national wave of indignation that has unleashed the “story”, as the Rosso defined it (“Do you know why the Jews have big noses? Because the air is free”, pronounced in front of the religious, civil and military authorities of the city). “Things must be made clear, then we go on,” is the dry comment of the mayor on the clarification.
“I’m not anti-Semitic, it was an inappropriate joke and I apologize – explained Rosso – but I told it because the stories have a very important function in Jewish culture”. And it is the mayor who clarifies the councilor’s unintentional nature, responding to a “beautiful” letter, says Bucci, which the president of the Jewish community, Raffaella Petraroli Luzzati, wrote to him on behalf of the community: “I regret what happened and for the disappointment that you put me on behalf of the community, the mayor replies, I guarantee you that on the part of the commissioner Lorenza Rosso who represented me there was no intention of disrespecting your important initiative ». And he adds, with an adverb that reveals a certain relativization: “However, please accept my apologies for those who have felt offended ». In her, Rosso writes: “I realize that a part of my intervention was unwelcome to you and I apologize if anyone felt offended in their sensitivity.”
Then there remains the bitterness for an important day, born to build knowledge, obscured by the shadow of antisemitism: “I received the two letters of apology and we certainly accept them – says President Petraroli Luzzati – however, it remains a great disappointment because this A very unpleasant episode canceled the contribution of the European Day of Jewish Culture, established to build culture and knowledge, the best antidotes to fight antisemitism ». Petraroli Luzzati yesterday, in addition to the mayor, also wrote to the president of the UCEI, the union of the Italian Jewish communities, Noemi Di Segni to inform her of the incident, also reporting the fact to the national guarantor on anti-Semitism.
After sending the letters of apology, the mayor Marco Bucci then received a message of thanks from the former president of the Jewish community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, homonymous and grandson of the chief rabbi of the Genoa community who chose to be deported together with 230 members of his community during the roundup on November 3, 1943 and was assassinated in Auschwitz with most of them.
