(Image by Andyso – Own work, 
Peloni: Though Rabbi Aiello wrote this article seven years ago, the message she crafted in this essay is more relevant than when it was first published, something she seemed to anticipate in the body of the text. We have a right and obligation to distinguish the Shoah as being unique from all other historical tragedies, just as antisemitism is a unique for of hatred. In fact, denying the particular attributes of the Shoah by shading it as just one of many slaughters would only serve to dilute and diminish and distract from the lessons which should be learned are actually quite unique to this historical event.
Even in Italy, the attempted extermination of Jews is being memorialized as ‘lost,’ ‘perished,’ and ‘were killed’
Rabbi Barbara Aiello | April 13, 2018
President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, at the State Assembly for the Opening of Yom HaShoah at Yad Vashem. Wednesday, April 7, 2021. (Photo credit: Kobi Gideon / GPO/ Government Press Office of Israel, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The high school in the town was new and high tech, something one often doesn’t see in the “toe” of the Italian “boot,” in the region of Calabria where I live — the region which is the poorest in all of Italy. It was also good to see that the school administration was forward thinking as evidenced by the effort made to provide students and community members with an opportunity to observe Holocaust Memorial Day, Europe’s January counterpart to the springtime observance of Yom HaShoah.
Meir Kahane (Photo by Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer, 
