The winter cold is felt harshly in the central streets of Rome on January 24. Around 10 in the morning the wind shakes the palm trees of the great Piazza Cavour, where no one circulates between the monumental “palazzaccio”, seat of the Supreme Court of Cassation, on the one hand, the old Adriano Theater now converted into a multiplex cinema , on the other and, laterally, the Waldensian Church inspired by early Christian basilicas.
The doors of the temple remain closed when an elderly, blind woman arrives, helped by a companion who, helpfully, pushes the wheelchair. They wait a few moments and a small door opens on the side of the church. The two women enter.
In the column of a street lamp, a poster announces in Italian “The words of Memory, the two stories of Vera Vigevani Jarach, from racial laws to the Argentine dictatorship.” A photo of Vera, mother of Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, on a red background occupies the left of the poster. Of course, she is the person who entered the building shortly before.
A little later, two groups of high school students arrive, humming, smiling, chatting among themselves. The boys and girls also enter through the side door together with a young woman who seems to be the teacher.
Several photographers, a television operator and people of different ages approach the place and enter the room next to the temple that is gradually filling up. At eleven, the time set for the talk with Vera, there are no seats available.
partisan. “Partigiana” of memory defines this woman who will be 95 years old next March 5. “Partigiana”, that is to say fighter, she says and clarifies that she prefers that word to “militant”. This is how she introduces herself, in her wheelchair, dressed simply, without any makeup, with the Mothers’ scarf that covers her very white hair, and the photo of her daughter Franca Jarach in the pin pinned to her warm jacket.
He speaks slowly and quietly for a few minutes until a microphone is brought up to him. Addressing especially young Italians, he recalls his birth in Milan in 1938, his Jewish family, and his daughter, one of the 30,000 disappeared in Argentina at the hands of the last dictatorship.
“Franca was kidnapped at the age of 18 in Buenos Aires,” he recalls. “She was a brilliant student, she defended justice and the truth… my name is Vera, her name was Franca… Vera and Franca”, names that unite them and identify a shared line of thought.
Another common thread of this victim of two genocides is her sense of Justice.
“My father was a lawyer. One day I asked him what Justice was and he replied that ‘justice is respect for the dignity of others’”, she says excitedly.
“The Mussolini dictatorship enacted racial laws in 1938. Faced with danger, my family decided to leave the country. I turned 11 on board the Augustus ship that took us from the port of Genoa to the port of Buenos Aires. At the beginning of the journey I was a girl, but when I arrived in Argentina I was no longer one” spiritually.
“My maternal grandfather did not want to leave Italy in ’39. He was an honest, hard-working and patriotic Italian. He did not understand the danger of remaining under the Nazi-fascist dictatorship. And when he decided to leave it was already too late. He was deported to Germany in 1943, to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where he was assassinated”, he recounts.
Vera had a serene childhood until 1938, just like her daughter, who was born in 1957 and was kidnapped in June 1976.
“My story and that of my family can be read on the internet. I care now to hear your questions. I don’t see them, but whoever wants to ask a question should come and sit next to me, close, so we can shake hands, ”she invites.
Shyly, some girls raise their hands and begin questions regarding fear, despondency, resistance.
“But all those asking are girls. And the boys don’t ask?” Vera urges. There is silence and a teenager sits next to her.
“What is your name?”. “Sebastian”. “Are you Spanish?” “No, I’m Argentine”, the boy answers and Vera laughs. But he was the only man who dared to ask. It is almost natural: the story of what happened in Argentina, the atrocity of children stolen from captive mothers and then murdered, is too moving for those who were born only 17 years ago in a democratic Italy.
Vera’s testimony is useful precisely in this sense because it shows that the past repeats itself over and over once more if history is forgotten.
“That History does not disappear, this is the best wish I can make for the future”, emphasizes Vera and adds that it is regarding “defending humanity. Never stay silent. Never. Use all means, the so-called social networks too, but paying attention to the deceptions of the networks. They work, but you have to be careful. The light is sought, not the shadows.
“I am a climber, when you are climbing a mountain and you don’t know how to continue, the voice of whoever is higher up or who is behind tells you where to hold on. And the fear passes and rises, ”she explains.
“The drive is always the heart,” underlines this woman who will visit different cities in her homeland for a month to pass on the testimony of peaceful struggle to today’s students.
Migrants. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean Sea, “the Mare Nostro, is today the tomb of the disappeared of the 21st century”, Vera is moved and while she composes herself, the Italian lawyer Arturo Salerni, president of the Truth and Justice Commission for the New Disappeared. This non-governmental entity was created in 2014 to face the drama of thousands and thousands of migrants who die trying to reach Europe with precarious means, such as rafts and rubber boats. One of its promoters has been the former Italian consul in Argentina Enrico Calamai, who during the beginning of the Videla, Massera and Agosti regime, and despite orders “from his superiors”, housed numerous people in the consular building persecuted for the Argentine dictatorship.
Currently, every Thursday in Rome, Calamai and his Red Hands Against Racism group march in silence in the center of the city following the example of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. Neither Vera nor Calamai have lowered their arms to demand “Memory, Truth and Justice”, wherever these human rights are violated.
Coinciding with Vera’s tour, on January 27 the Holocaust commemoration included an extensive television interview with life senator Liliana Segre, a Jew, who suffered in the Auschwitz extermination camp to which she was deported when she was 13 years old, and where he managed to survive following the defeat of Nazi-fascism.
The deportation train left from Binario 21 (Platform 21) of the Milan central station. That underground platform is now a Site of Memory that includes a library and a large wall on which, at the senator’s suggestion, the word “Indifference” has been carved.
Without a doubt, Nunca más should include a Mai Piu to Indifference.
Sister Leonie Duquet’s niece
D.S.
Petite, apparently fragile, Sister Genevieve Jeanningros listens very attentively to Vera Jarach’s talk in the Waldensian Church.
She is a worker nun, who followed the teachings of the priest Arturo Paoli, deceased centenary following tireless preaching in Latin America and Europe, friend of the murdered Argentine bishop Enrique Angelelli.
Sister Genevieve, French, lives in a wagon in the Ostia amusement park, regarding 25 kilometers from the center of Rome. There she helps the families of the Park workers, she shares the inclemencies of the place and the problems of this group of people.
Sister Genevieve is recognized by Pope Francis not only for her work in Ostia, but also for her tragic link with Argentina, as she is the niece of Leonie Duquet, one of the two French nuns who were victims of State Terrorism during the last military dictatorship. Leonie was kidnapped with the group of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who were meeting in the Church of Santa Cruz. Genevieve’s aunt was thrown into the Río de la Plata following the kidnapping in December 1977. The waves returned Leonie’s remains to the coast and now they rest in the garden of the Buenos Aires church. On the trip that one of her Mothers, Angela Lita Boitano, made to Rome in 2019, Sister Genevieve shared with her a long private interview that Pope Francis granted them.
*Journalist. From Rome.
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