Today’s celebration of Remembrance Day almost makes us smile, with a bitter smile, in an era that seems instead dedicated to the indifference of everything, to oblivion, to the sole memory of the offense and of the most private interest. Established at the beginning of the new century, as the decades moved us away from Auschwitz and Nazi-fascism, it was supposed to serve as a reminder of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust. The founding law, voted unanimously by the Italian parliament in 2000, read as follows: “The Italian Republic recognizes January 27, the date of the demolition of the gates of Auschwitz, as “Remembrance Day”, in order to remember the Shoah (extermination of the Jewish people), the racial laws, the Italian persecution of Jewish citizens, the Italians who have suffered deportation, imprisonment, death, as well as those who, even in camps and different sides, they opposed the extermination project, and at the risk of their own lives they saved other lives and protected the persecuted”.

A monstrous past, a catastrophic present

The time of the law seems prehistoric: not only for the many reasons for the crisis that have affected this institution for many years now of our civil calendar, and not even just for the painful, problematic, inevitable short circuit that ends up connecting the monstrous past of the Jewish genocide in Europe and the catastrophic present of the Gaza Strip tormented by the government and army of Israel. A short circuit of which would be good discuss openly, avoiding both the simple comparison between Gaza and Auschwitz and also, however, the absolute prohibition of any problematic comparison of Auschwitz with anything else: the historical uniqueness of the Holocaust, in terms of characteristics, ideological-racial design, war and technological commitment, is not a sufficient reason not to find common traits and sinister assonances in other days of history. Indeed, the Day of Remembrance, taking it to the extreme, was supposed to serve precisely to compare: not to forcibly equate, but to prevent pieces of that horror from being made current by the humanity of the present and future.

Without memory there is nothing

It would be a nice discussion, it would indeed be a nice political and civic exercise but it requires an element of collective life that is being completely lost, together with the capacity for secular and free discussions, namely memory. Not only and not so much of the distant horrors, of the dust and ashes of the twentieth century, but also of the recent ones, just buried, still bleeding. Without remote and recent memory there is no healthy comparison and not even any scandalous comparison. Without memory there is nothing, and this is perhaps the disease of our time and of what we have before us. Let us think precisely of Gaza, so as not to escape the closest, bloodiest horror. The demonstrations, the political “debate” – so to speak -, the echoes of the historiographical and legal debate on the definition of Genocide, indignations and mobilisations, mutual accusations, often vulgar: all sucked into the vortex of forgetfulness, all buried on the next page. Obviously, there are places and people who continue to mobilize and develop serious discussions, which are by definition the basis of collective thought, action and the improvement of society. But overall, apart from a few niches of activist intelligence, what remains are meager flags that are so many placeholders, and little else. Let’s not talk about other conflicts that immediately enjoyed less attention, or about parts of the world that are far enough from our inner geography as late Westerners to not deserve any attention at all.