It has been 71 years since that tragic 30 January 1944, the day when more than 600 Jews were pushed into the cars of that train that then left from track 21of the Central Station in Milan with destination to Auschwitz. Liliana Segre, from Milan, was 13 when she climbed on that train: "I was a little girl, just like anyone else, but guilty of being Jewish", she recalled yesterday during the commemoration at track 21 of the Central Station, promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio with the Jewish Community of Milan. The story of her deportation together with her beloved father Alberto, on the RSHA convoy, moved a very large audience, mostly young students, who welcomed her strong appeal against indifference.

Since 1997, the Community of Sant'Egidio, with the Jewish Community of Milan, renews this memory coming back every year into the basement of the station, right in the place from where the convoys of deportees left for the extermination camps. Here today, on track 21, is the Memorial of the Shoah in Milan.

"To remember is an imperative. It is not only re-evocation of the past but it also questions us about the present." said Marco Impagliazzo, President of the Community of Sant'Egidio, who added: "It is necessary to work effectively on the integration in Italy to prevent racism, anti-Semitism and contempt from excluding certain communities from social life. The real road to integration is that of a society of living together, the only one that can overcome all forms of racism and contempt".

The event was attended by the Deputy Mayor of Milan, Ada Lucia De Cesaris, and the Chief Rabbi of Milan, Rabbi Alfonso Arbib.
Moreover, Sumaya Abdel Qader, a member of one of the Muslim communities of Milan, invited to look to the future so that this century may be the century of the courage of those that no longer accept neither horror nor injustice, inviting to start again from the courage to face and fight what is wrong.
The notes of Jovica Jovic, a Roma musician, accompanied the meeting by recalling the memory of the extermination of the Roma and Sinti.