International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Tatiana Bucci’s testimony in the European Parliament

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the voice of Tatiana Bucci, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, resonated within the European Parliament.

At 88 years old, she spoke today from the perspective of a woman who has endured deportation, dehumanization, and the loss of loved ones since her earliest childhood. We listened to a harrowing account: the night of the arrest in 1944 following a denunciation, the journey to Birkenau in cattle wagons, the selections, the separation from her family, and the memory of those who never returned - including her grandmother, sent to the gas chamber on the very day of their arrival, and her cousin. She described life for children in a place where childhood... no longer existed, a place where games were replaced by cold, hunger, and the constant presence of death.

Mrs. Bucci survived this ordeal due to the "luck" that Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death," mistook her and her sister for twins. Consequently, he did not send them to the gas chambers, deeming them "useful" for his horrific experiments.

Her moving testimony guided us through a succession of facts that cannot and must not be forgotten - facts that compel us to look at present-day history with responsibility and compassion. The right of today's children to live their lives was invoked with the quiet, dignified strength of memory held by an 88 year old lady whose life story serves as a profound lesson for history.

The danger of forgetting is that it transforms suffering into distant history, making us vulnerable to its repetition. The future lies in our hands.