A far-right Italian politician, notorious for his anti-vax sentiments, has sparked outrage after referring to lifetime senator and Holocaust survivor Lilliana Segre by the number the Nazis inked on her arm at Auschwitz concentration camp.
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"All that was missing [in the vaccine debate] was her... 75190," Fabio Meroni, a lawmaker for the right-wing Lega Nord party from northern Lombardy, said on his Facebook page.
The post was finally removed from the site after other politicians from centre-left party Partito Democratico demanded an urgent apology to the nonagenarian who was taken and transported to Nazi death camp Auschwitz from Milan at the age of 13.
"The vulgar considerations of those who like councilor Fabio Meroni equate vaccinations with Nazi fascism offend all people with historical awareness and a sense of humanity," they said in their statement.
Meroni first appeared unfazed by the backlash and continued to express dissatisfaction with Segre's claim that vaccines were "the only way out of the pandemic," adding that "she is not a doctor" and that he referred to her by "that number instead of her name to avoid getting banned from Facebook."
As the scandal escalated, however, Meroni then offered a formal apology to Segre, stating that "in this climate of hatred, unfortunately, I too got involved and I tried to express my thoughts in a totally wrong way."
Walker Meghnagi, president of Milan's Jewish community, called his attack "intolerable" for a public figure to use such "vile" terms "for those who have suffered the horror of the racial laws on their own skin."
Meghnagi was not the only one, however, as the most severe rebuke of Meroni's comments came from Roberto Cenati, president of the Milan branch of ANPI, the National Association of Italian Partisans.
"Meroni used the same language with which the Nazis negated the personality of those who ended up in the Auschwitz extermination camp for the sole fault of being born," Cenati said.
This is not the first time antisemitic attacks towards Lilliana Segre have made the news, as she was placed under police protection last year after receiving a flood of abuse, including death threats, as a consequence of her call to a parliamentary committee to study and battle all forms of antisemitism, racism, incitement to hatred, and ethnically and religiously motivated violence.
Segre was appointed a senator for life in 2018 by President Sergio Mattarella, honoring her years of speaking out and spreading the truth regarding the Holocaust's atrocities.
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