Antisemitic graffiti painted on Jewish family’s door in Turin

The incident marks the umpteenth antisemitic episode in a few weeks.

By ROSSELLA TERCATIN
The Italian flag waves over the Quirinal Palace in Rome, Italy May 30, 2018 (photo credit: REUTERS/TONY GENTILE)
The Italian flag waves over the Quirinal Palace in Rome, Italy May 30, 2018
(photo credit: REUTERS/TONY GENTILE)
Star of David and the word “Jude” drawn with a black marker were found on Sunday in Turin on the apartment door of a well-known Jewish banker, Italian media reported Monday. Turin is the capital of Italy’s northern region of Piedmont.
“I called the police in tears. They asked me: ‘Do these things still happen in 2020?’ Obviously yes,” Marcello Segre, who is also the head of a local charity, told Italian daily La Repubblica.
“It’s serious – 30 years have passed since such incidents were happening,” he said. “At the beginning, I didn’t want to believe it. I thought of not saying anything publicly, but then I decided it was better not to keep silent.”
The incident is one of many similar episode in Italy in less than a month, with antisemitic writings defacing the doors and walls of houses belonging to Jewish families, former deportees, resistance fighters and their descendants.

Segre also said he was not afraid and that he felt the support of the city, including from Mayor Chiara Appennino and from the president of the northwestern Piedmont region, Alberto Cirio.
Asked if he was going to remove the graffiti, he said “I am thinking about it. [But] until someone forces me to do it, I won’t.”
On January 24, three days ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day – which Italy marks with hundreds of initiatives at the national as well as local levels – graffiti reading “Juden Hier” (Jews here) was uncovered in the Piedmont city of Mondovì on the front door of the son of Lidia Rolfi, a partisan fighter deported to Ravensbrück.
Since then, swastikas and antisemitic insults have appeared on doors and walls all over the country.
On Saturday, a swastika was discovered on the house of Auschwitz survivor Arianna Szorenyi in a small town in the northeastern Friuli region.

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On January 31, the annual report by Italian research institute Eurispes found that more than 15% of Italians believe the Holocaust never happened, marking an alarming six-fold rise since 2004, when such a position was expressed by only 2.7% of the respondents.