Garden of the Righteous of Monte Stella hill

Milan, 21 November 2018 – The Committee of Guarantors of the Association for the Garden of the Righteous in Milan, composed by Milan City Hall, Gariwo and UCEI, has ratified the choice made by the Assembly last November 7 concerning the theme of the celebrations to be held on 6 March 2019 at the Garden of the Righteous of Monte Stella hill in Milan: “The Human Kind at a crossroads. Europe and Africa between indifference and responsibility”.

The approved figures are:

István Bibó, Hungarian intellectual, critical conscience of his nation on the country’s collusions with Nazism, and close aide to Imre Nagy, the then chief of the government, during the revolution of 1956 in Budapest;

Simone Veil, Jewish French woman and Holocaust survivor, indomitable herald of human rights, women’s dignity and the role of Europe for peace, the first woman President of the European Parliament and also the first to preside over the directly elected European Parliament;

Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist activist, first African woman to receive in 2004 the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace;

Denis Mukwege, Congolese doctor, he has devoted his life for many years to treating the women victims of “rape as a weapon of war”, despite the threats he received from the country’s armed groups, and Peace Nobel Laureate of 2018.

The Committee also approved the nominations received by the Association for the Virtual Garden of Monte Stella hill, the digital space hosted on Gariwo Website, which ideally further opens the real Garden to let room for more exemplary figures. They are: Adélaide Hautval, Andrea Angeli, Maria Bertolini Fioroni, Father Dino Frisia, Gerhard Kurzbach, Giuseppe Lella, Guido Ucelli and Carla Tosi Ucelli, Ludwig “Luz” Long, Mons. JP Carroll Abbing, Giandomenico Picco, Raffaele Mattioli, Sister Leonella Sgorbati.

“We are happy about this year’s choice, through which we have aimed at emphasizing the most significant figures of the European integration’s process, who have struggled for dialogue, democracy and peace”, said Gariwo Chairman Gabriele Nissim. “And besides these Righteous people for Europe, it seemed important to us to honour two personalities of the present time who in Africa are committed against wars and for the process of renewal and development of the continent”.

The subject of this year’s celebrations - said Lamberto Bertolé, president of Milan City Council - is very timely and forces us to think about how much unfair and myopic is the diffused indifference in much of Europe towards the problems of the African populations and of the narrow connection among the environmental matters that, in first place, invest the African continent and the social affairs linked to the migrations. Against this drift, the figures and the great lives remembered in the Garden of the Righteous can be extremely inspiring and, with them, also that of Ulianova Radice, who devoted part of her life in the not easy battle for the remembrance, to maintain alive the memory of those who gave a lot to the world, saving the more weak, the persecuted ones and opposing himself to the genocides.”

“To fight the serious crisis of the idea of Europe, that crosses the continent, and to help the African populations to overcome the difficulties due the climatic changes, the demographic increase and the economic crisis we must win the indifference and assume our responsibilities, as the Righteous - chosen by the association - have done” said Giorgio Mortara, UCEI councillor.

In the Assembly of 7 November, Gabriele Nissim was appointed Deputy President of the Association, a post that had remained vacant after the premature death of Ulianova Radice, formerly Deputy President of the Association and Director of Gariwo, who will awarded the Golden Medal to her Memory (Golden Ambrogino) by Milan City Hall in the course of the ceremony of next 7 December, day of Saint Ambrose.