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They are Raphael Lemkin, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Henry Morgenthau, Ilham Tohti, Evgenija Solomonovna Ginzburg, Godeliève Mukasarasi. The celebrations on March 6, for the Day of the Righteous of Humanity

Milan, January 4 2022 – The Committee of Guarantors of the Association for the Garden of the Righteous of Milan, of which the Municipality and the Gariwo Foundation are part, has ratified the choices expressed by the Assembly on 22 December regarding the theme for the celebrations of 6 March 2022 at the Garden of the Righteous of Monte Stella in Milan: "Preventing genocides and mass atrocities. The stories of the Righteous against silence and indifference".

"Those honored in the Garden of the Righteous are men and women who, in different times and places, have spent their lives in an attempt to stem hatred and violence in the world – states the President of the City Council Elena Buscemi –. They are testimonies of tenacity and courage, of an unconditional commitment to a society free from oppression. Remembering these figures and their value is a duty and a task that we must also fulfill for the new generations, so that through these examples they can form conscious citizens and citizens ".

The President of the Gariwo Foundation, Gabriele Nissim, explains the meaning of the choices: "With the Righteous that we will honor this year we are sending a great signal to the whole country for the prevention of genocides, in the spirit of the United Nations Convention approved after the war on merit of the Polish Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, who sought to unite the world around the mobilization against any mass atrocity". The focus is therefore on the challenges of the contemporary world: "While today in Russia Memorial, the organization that documented the gulags, is outlawed, we wanted to pay homage to an extraordinary writer like Evgenija Solomonovna Ginzburg who was one of the great souls of the resistance moral to Soviet totalitarianism. The garden of Milan does not want to remain silent in the face of this dangerous distortion of memory. We also remember the moral resistance of the Uighurs in the face of re-education camps, where attempts are being made to erase their historical identity. For this reason we give tribute to university professor Ilham Tohti, now sentenced to life imprisonment for the denunciation he made to the world".

Here are their stories in brief, available in full on the Gariwo website:

Raphael Lemkin. Polish Jew, creator of the definition of genocide, reminded the world that the prevention of such crimes is the responsibility of all humanity. He devoted all his efforts, personally contacting world leaders in their languages, to the approval of a convention against the international crime of genocide, which he drafted and approved on 9 December 1948 by the UN.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, he disobeyed his government's orders and provided transit visas to persecuted Jews, thereby losing his job, livelihood and reputation in his own country. To those who could not pay for visas he gave the documents free of charge and set up an office in the consulate where entry permits were issued. Between June 15 and 22, 1940, Sousa Mendes issued a total of 1.575 visas.

Henry Morgenthau. American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, witness to the Armenian genocide, he raised funds for surviving orphans and worked for the repatriation of surviving Armenians who continued to die of hunger and epidemics. He chose to denounce the Metz Yeghern tragedy, making public the documentation and reports on the massacre of the Armenians, holding conferences, writing analyzes on the genocidal methodology.

Ilham Tohti. A Uyghur teacher, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for denouncing discrimination against minorities in China, at the end of a quick trial that lasted two days. He has always rejected violence and encouraged dialogue, also creating, for this purpose, a website to promote dialogue between the Uyghur minority and the rest of the Chinese population. Known as the "Mandela of China", he is serving his sentence despite the numerous international recognitions attributed to his actions.

Evgeniya Solomonovna Ginzburg. Witnessing the vertigo of the Soviet labor camps, he endured the solitary confinement, the backbreaking work, the torture, for his opposition to the destructive logic of totalitarianism towards human dignity. During his long resistance in the hell of Stalinism, he reworks his experience in the search for truth: his book Journey into Vertigo remains a dramatically extraordinary testimony of a protagonist of the 900th century.

Godeliève Mukasarasi. A survivor of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, despite the threats and killing of her daughter and her husband, she chose to testify in the Akayesu trial, contributing to the first conviction in the world for genocide. Today she is still involved in the SEVOTA organization she created, which brings together 80 associations with over 2000 members and promotes reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi. Among the initiatives in which she is most involved is medical assistance for survivors of sexual violence during the genocide.