ROME (AP) – An attempt by an Italian Holocaust survivor to encourage other older adults to receive the COVID-19 vaccine has sparked a wave of anti-Semitic comments and other social media insults.
Liliana Segre, 90, received the first of a series of two-shot vaccines in Milan on Thursday. She urged people her age “not to be afraid and to get the vaccine.”
“I’m not afraid of the vaccine, I’m afraid of the disease,” Segre said.
After Segre’s comments received negative attention on social media, Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese expressed solidarity and denounced the “new and unacceptable attack”, which he said was marked by a “very dangerous mixture of hatred, violence and racism ”.
Segre publicly revealed a shoulder to receive the vaccine injection at a hospital on the first day Milan began administering shots to residents over 80 years old. She said she believes those who refuse to be vaccinated are “either too scared or not well informed”.
“So, as a 90-year-old grandmother, I tell my ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who reach this age not to be afraid and get the vaccine,” she said.
Segre holds one of the highest distinctions in Italy. In 2018, President Sergio Mattarella made her a life senator in homage to her years of talking about the Holocaust with Italian schoolchildren in classrooms across the country.
When German troops occupied Italy during World War II, many members of the small Jewish minority in Italy were gathered in Rome and elsewhere for deportation.
Segre was one of the few Italian children to survive deportation to a Nazi destruction camp. She and her family hid after the regime of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini introduced anti-Jewish laws, but was arrested in 1943 and put on trains leaving Milan for Nazi-run camps.
The 1938 racist laws targeting Jews were abolished with Mussolini’s death in 1945.
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This version has been corrected to show that Segre’s first name is Liliana, not Lilian.