Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The public initiatives have been cancelled, tomorrow from 14.30pm it will be possible to follow the unveiling of the new plaques at the Monte Stella Garden on the Gariwo Facebook page

Milan, March 5 2020 - The Day of the Righteous of Humanity, a civil solemnity dedicated on 6 March each year to remembering the exemplary figures who saved lives and defended human dignity, this time will be different from the past. In compliance with the regulations issued by the authorities to stem the spread of the Coronavirus, the public celebrations planned in Milan for the Righteous have been cancelled. It will however be possible to follow the unveiling of the plaques via streaming.

The Association for the Garden of the Righteous (composed of the Municipality of Milan, Gariwo and UCEI) believes that the message of this Day is more relevant than ever and deserves attention in a difficult phase like this, which requires responsible behavior on the part of every citizen for the common good.

The theme of the 2020 Day is "Global responsibility. The challenge of the Righteous to save the planet and humanity", with the reference to the commitment of two scientists who defended the environment such as Valerij Legasov and Wallace Broecker, of exemplary figures of the resistance to the fascist and Nazi regimes, such as Piero Martinetti and the women of Rosenstrasse, and activists for peace and solidarity with migrants, such as Hevrin Khalaf and Yusra Mardini.

In their honor tomorrow, Friday 6 March, a private ceremony will be held at the Garden of the Righteous on Monte Stella, in which a representative of the municipal administration, the president of Gariwo Gabriele Nissim and the vice-president of the UCEI Giorgio Mortara will unveil the new plaques and they will remember the salient moments of the biographies of the Righteous.

The event will be broadcast live from 14.30 pm on the Gariwo Facebook page starting from this link to allow students, members of associations and citizens to participate, albeit from afar.

Journalists, television operators and photographers will be able to attend the initiative.

According to Gabriele Nissim, “the Coronavirus has suddenly brought us back to the awareness of human frailty and makes us aware that contrasts lead nowhere. This was the starting point that pushed the right men to risk and act during wars, genocides and humanitarian crises."

During the live broadcast, the Righteous of the Virtual Garden of 2020 will also be remembered, i.e. those exemplary figures who, despite not having a dedicated plaque in the Garden of Milan, are present in the Monte Stella area hosted on the Gariwo website. The figures in question are: Francesco Quaianni, Emily Bayer, Father Italo Laracca, Carlo Bianchi, Father Andrey Sheptytskyy, the De Regibus family (Antonio and Margherita, with their daughter Fiorentina), Leonilde Simonazzi, Reinhold Chrystman, Carlo Tagliabue, Nella Molinari and Luigi Cortile, Franco Basaglia.

THE BIOGRAPHIES OF THE RIGHTEOUS OF MONTE STELLA

The women of Rosenstrasse saved 2.000 Jews, their husbands, from persecution with a bold protest on Berlin's Rosenstrasse. They gathered there for over a week, despite threats from the Nazi authorities; 

Piero Martinetti, founder of the School of Milan, was the only philosopher among university professors to refuse to take the oath to the fascist regime in 1931, preferring to renounce his professorship rather than his freedom of conscience; 

Wallace Broecker, American geophysicist and climatologist, can be defined as the "pioneer" of climate change for having predicted the growth of the average global temperature back in 1975, raising awareness of global warming in a period in which few were ready to listen; 

Valerij Alekseevič Legasov, chemist who mitigated the damage of Chernobyl. After the explosion, he insisted on the evacuation of the population of Pripyat and worked regardless of the radiation to which he was exposed. In Vienna he testified about the responsibility for the incident, arousing the hostility of his Soviet colleagues; 

Yusra Mardini, a Syrian swimmer, with her sister Sarah saved the migrants who fled with her towards the Greek coast and with a heartfelt appeal from the United Nations denounced the plight of the refugees. At the Rio 2016 Olympics you marched under the flag with the five circles, in the refugee team; 

Hevrin Khalaf, a Kurdish activist, dedicated her life to women's rights and the fight for peaceful coexistence between Kurds, Syriac Christians and Arabs. She, leader of the Party for the Future of Syria, was brutally killed in 2019 by Islamic militiamen, immediately after the Turkish invasion of Syrian Kurdistan.