International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Is Antisemitism Once Again a Scourge?

On the occasion of yesterday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp on 27 January 1945, special commemorations were held at the European Parliament with the participation of Holocaust survivors. Among those who shared her story was Tatiana Bucci, an Italian Holocaust survivor.

Bucci was born in 1937 in Fiume, a city that, at the time, belonged to Italy and is now located in Croatia. She was just six years old when she and her four-year-old sister Andra, along with their mother, aunt, grandmother, and cousin Sergio, were deported to Auschwitz on 4 April 1944.

As she explained, the fact that she and Andra were considered twins helped them, as well as Sergio, avoid being sent to the gas chambers. The three children spent ten months in the Auschwitz camp. “I became accustomed to life there, and from the guards’ conversations I understood that I was Jewish and that we Jews were destined for such a life – which was not life, but death,” she said.

The sisters managed to survive when one of the camp guards warned them not to respond when the question was asked whether any of the children wanted to return to their mothers. They passed this information on to Sergio, who, however, could not restrain himself and answered affirmatively. He was then deported to another camp, subjected to medical experiments, and subsequently brutally murdered by being hanged on butcher’s hooks.

After the liberation of the camp, Tatiana and Andra were sent to an orphanage in England, and in December 1946, they were reunited with their parents in Italy.

Upon arriving in Rome, the sisters were shown photographs of children in the hope that they would recognize them. Tatiana later understood that these were children who had been killed following a raid on the Roman Jewish ghetto in 1943.

Tatiana and Andra Bucci are among the youngest children to have survived Auschwitz and to have retained memories of the experience.

“I hope that all children in the world will be able to have the kind of life I was able to have after the war, and to live to old age as I have,” Bucci told MEPs, adding nevertheless that “life is beautiful.”

The EU strategy

According to a report by the J7 Task Force Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published last year, the number of antisemitic incidents has risen dramatically in seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside Israel.

Between 2021 and 2023, the number of antisemitic incidents increased by 75% in Germany, 185% in France, and 82% in the United Kingdom.

In 2021, the European Commission presented the first-ever EU strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life. It is based on three pillars: preventing all forms of antisemitism, protecting and fostering Jewish life, and promoting research, education, and Holocaust remembrance.

The strategy proposes measures to strengthen cooperation with online platforms to combat antisemitism on the internet, improve the protection of public spaces and places of worship, establish a European centre for research on contemporary antisemitism, and create a network of sites where the extermination of Jews took place.

Fifty-five per cent of Europeans believe that antisemitism is a problem in their country. This is more than in 2018, when 50% held that view. According to Eurostat data, 47% of Europeans (compared to 36% in 2018) say that antisemitism in their country has intensified over the past five years.