The Italian Renascence 

"Haters are people we should feel sorry for."
"I thought a committee against hatred, as a matter of principle, should be accepted by everyone. I thought it was almost banal."
"I have been worrying about our society. It made me think of a farcical and dangerous revival of the 'Gott mit uns; [alluding to the motto 'God is with us', featured on Nazi uniforms]."
"I personally experienced how easy it is to move from words of hatred to acts of hatred. I was taught that whoever saves a life saves the whole world."
"For this reason, a world where those who save lives are punished instead of honored sounds upside down to me."
"They’re serial haters who need to hate someone. Wasting time writing to wish death on a 90-year-old, anyway nature will soon take care of that."
"I don’t forgive [her experience at the hands of the Nazis]. I don’t forgive and I don’t forget, but I don’t hate."
Liliana Segre, 89 year-old Holocaust survivor, Rome

Italian Holocaust survivor and senator for life Liliana Segre

(photo credit: DANIEL REICHEL/PAGINE EBRAICHE)

"She is not afraid."
"She is shocked by these tensions and by this entire situation."
"People who were once forced to feel ashamed of these [hateful anti-Semitic] views now express them with pride."
Luciano Belli Paci, 61, Rome, Liliana Segre's son

"Every time prominent Jews are at the center of media attention in Italy, they get subjected to online anti-Semitic abuse."
"The anti-Semitic insults come from far-right circles that have a past, and sometimes present, of violence. It's part of their radical rightwing code, this pugnacious attitude."
"Since the beginning of the year to the end of September, we recorded about 190 anti-Semitic incidents, about 70 percent online."
"The radical far-right feels more legitimized and stronger, thus they're more active."
"Twenty years ago you couldn't hang around shouting 'Viva il Duce,' there was greater resistance towards extremist themes. The dam barriers have been lowered, so people feel they can freely pour hatred towards Segre online."
Stefano Gatti, Foundation Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center, Milan

She was thirteen years old when she was packed off with her family from their home in Italy to Auschwitz, the death camp in Poland where her family was murdered, and she managed somehow to survive, one of only a few Italian-Jewish children whom fate spared from the death that overcame six million European Jews in Nazi Germany's campaign to completely eradicate Jewish life through a meticulously planned Final Solution, approached initially by dehumanizing Jews, by depriving them of every human right; ghettoizing, then shipping them to work- and death-camps, and finally annihilating them in gas chambers and reducing them to ashes in giant furnaces.

This is a woman who has spent her life reminding the world of what it would far prefer to forget. Who became a public speaker, explaining to those who were too young to know, the dehumanization campaign that allowed Nazi Germany to 'legitimize' the cleansing of the social order, rounding up Jews, political dissenters, Roma, Homosexuals, the disabled, critical clergy, as enemies whose presence within society was a threat to law and order and public decency. In the process succeeding in extinguishing millions of lives of innocents, children, women and men from all walks of life.

Holocaust memorials at a doorstep, Via del Portico d'Ottavia, Rome.

Sylvia Poggioli/NPR

The rising spectre of renascent anti-Semitism has raised its ugly head everywhere in the world, including Italy. Ms. Segre's activism to ensure that the Holocaust not be forgotten, shelved far from public scrutiny, has failed to endear her to the Axis countries that were allied with Nazi Germany. Racist language has begun to consume Italy in lock-step with the rise of far-right groups signalling a return to fascism and a renewed fascination with Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini. No fewer than 200 threats each and every day went out to warn this woman that there were ample Italians who despised her message and threatened her.

A Black Italian soccer star, Mario Balotelli, who had been adopted and raised by Jews, was the recipient of racist chants from fans of the Hellas Verona team, whose leader argued that "Hitler chants are just kidding around". Even games between ten-year-olds are not exempt from the venomous sting of racism, with a mother at a soccer game using a racial epithet on a Black child. A prominent Jewish journalist at a rally of the League party was told "You're not Italian, you are Jewish, go home!"

The country, said Noemi Di Seni, president of the Union of the Italian Jewish Community, was going through a "rise in anti-Semitism, which manifests itself in many ways". The heated atmosphere and the ongoing, copious threats have resulted in police being assigned to protect Ms.Segre when she speaks in public. Rallies have been organized by politicians and Jewish groups in Milan and Rome to show Italians there is solidarity with Ms.Segre. Italian President Sergio Mattarella, recognizing the importance of Ms.Segre's testimony on the Holocaust to Italian students, made her a lifetime senator.

Senator Segre last month called for the formation of a counteracting parliamentary commission that would be tasked with investigating hate, racism and social media in Italy. Her motion passed, despite the nationalist League Party, post-fascist Brothers of Italy and center-right Forza Italia opposing it.

Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre has been put under police protection after repeated anti-Semitic threats against her life [Luca Bruno/AP]