Speech by Gabriele Nissim, President of Gariwo Foundation, at the opening ceremony of Farnesina Garden of the Righteous.
His Excellency the Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Antonio Tajani, His Excellency the Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri, distinguished ambassadors and friends who have gathered for the inauguration of the Garden of the Righteous.
I am proud to say that Italian institutions and the European Parliament have taken up Gariwo Foundation’s idea of celebrating the Righteous of Humanity, exemplary individuals who take responsibility for saving lives during genocides, for defending human dignity and freedom in dictatorships, for putting a stop to wars and crimes against humanity in every historical context. If the extreme evil of History is genocide and totalitarianism, as Raphael Lemkin and Hannah Arendt argued, the Righteous are those who oppose exterminations and the dehumanisation of the human person. They represent the possibility of good against evil. They are the antithesis of indifference Senator Liliana Segre always talks about. The Righteous are neither an abstract category nor an unattainable exception. Through their actions they always represent the possibility of choice for every human being, who can become a guardian of the life and freedom of another human being.
The inauguration of Farnesina Garden of the Righteous is a fact of great moral significance for Italian foreign policy and for the image of Italy all around the world. Italy is the country of beauty and creativity, but also the country that promotes the beauty of good individuals. This is perhaps the best Made in Italy product. Righteous diplomats we remember today prove how Italian diplomacy has written some pages of extraordinary humanity throughout its history, which deserve to be remembered as an example of what I like to call the diplomacy of Good.
The diplomacy of Good is that which saves the lives of persecuted individuals and defends the value of freedom.
My family is one of the few that was saved from the Holocaust in Thessaloniki, when the Nazi occupation led to the extermination of 48,000 Jews, 98% of the Jewish population of the city. Well, in Thessaloniki three diplomats we honour today, Guelfo Zamboni, Lucillo Merci, Giuseppe Castruccio, organised the train of salvation that took three hundred Jews, not only of Italian origin, from Thessaloniki to Athens, a city under Italian occupation. The Italian consulate did its utmost to provide false documents that saved many lives. And similar episodes happened during the Armenian genocide, during the extermination of the Tutsis in Rwanda, with extraordinary consul Pierantonio Costa, and during Pinochet’s coup d’état, when the Italian embassy protected hundreds of persecuted people through the work of diplomats Tomaso de Vergottini and Emilio Barbarani. And in recent times, some Italian diplomats have lost their lives during their dangerous missions, as it happened in Congo on 22nd February 2021, when Luca Attanasio, his driver Mustapha Milambo and carabiniere Vittorio Iacovacci died in an attack.
Today we commemorate the first nine individuals in Farnesina Garden of the Righteous, but this is only a beginning, because, over the coming years, we would like to bring to light many stories that must no longer remain only in archives. And perhaps one day, in our work, we will also be able to remember the diplomats of other countries who were able to defend human dignity. We imagine that the Garden of the Righteous will be increasingly universal and become an example for the whole of Europe and the world.
Farnesina Garden of the Righteous not only looks to the past, it reminds us of our difficult present. It is a Garden that shakes our consciences and forces us to avoid a dangerous illness of the spirit that risks crippling us and that we may call resignation. For the first time since the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are confronted with wars that are close to our borders and we see the threat of new autocracies and dictatorships upon us, from Russia, to China, to Iran, to theocratic and fundamentalist countries. We realize that democratic values are under threat and that the rights of women and men are being violated in so many countries around the world.
And yet, we seriously risk getting used to this and not reacting to it, and thinking that for the sake of our quiet life we should turn a blind eye and even hoist the white flag and agree with the new demons of our time. This is a dangerous illusion because, as Primo Levi warned us, evil in the world never happens on an island, it affects us all and we can be submerged if we are distracted, sooner or later. We all remember what 1938 Munich pact led to, which paved the way for Hitler’s expansionism and the extermination of the Jews in the name of the illusion of peace with the German Führer, which some naively believed they could appease.
History never repeats itself in the same way, but signs of evil in our time are too numerous. Farnesina Garden of the Righteous therefore has this meaning today: call politicians, at all levels, not to fall into resignation and to consider that our luck of living in democratic regimes entrusts us with an important task, which should unite all forces of the different political alignments.
Today, we must all become guardians of rights that are denied in the world and be a point of reference for anyone who fights for freedom, from Russia to Iran, to China. And we must become a point of reference for those who want peace and the right to their national sovereignty in the Middle East. We can no longer accept permanent war between two peoples. Since 12th March 2024 those who have entered Farnesina and visited the Garden of the Righteous have received this message. Remembering the best diplomats, this Garden will call everyone to responsibility in these difficult times.
