Liliana Segre

Liliana Segre (Italian pronunciation: [liˈljaːna ˈsɛːɡre, - ˈseːɡre]; born 10 September 1930) is an Italian Holocaust survivor, named senator for life by President Sergio Mattarella in 2018 for outstanding patriotic merits in the social field.

Born in 1930 into a Milanese family of Jewish origins, in 1938 Segre was expelled from her primary school after the promulgation of the Italian Racial Laws. In 1943, she was arrested with her family and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The only survivor among her relatives, with the end of the World War II in 1945, she returned to Milan. After decades of silence, in the 1990s she started to speak to the public, especially young students, about her experience. Born in Milan into a family of Jewish origins, Segre lived with her father Alberto and her paternal grandparents, Giuseppe Segre and Olga Loevvy. Her mother, Lucia Foligno, died when Liliana was not yet one year old. Her family was secular, and the awareness of being Jewish came to Liliana only after the drama of the Italian Racial Laws of 1938, after which she was expelled from school.

After the intensification of the persecution of the Italian Jews, her father hid her at a friend's home, using false documents. On 10 December 1943, at the age of thirteen, together with her father, Segre tried to flee to Switzerland, but both were rejected by the Swiss authorities.

On 11 December 1943, she was arrested by fascists in the province of Varese at Selvetta di Viggiù. After six days in prison in Varese, she was transferred to Como and finally to Milan, where she was detained for 40 days. On 30 January 1944, Segre was deported from platform 21 of the Milan Central railway station to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she arrived seven days later. She was immediately separated from her father Alberto, whom she never saw again and who would be killed on 27 April 1944 (see the memorial plaque below). On 18 May 1944 her paternal grandparents were arrested in Inverigo, in the Province of Como, and deported after a few weeks to Auschwitz, where they were also killed on their arrival on 30 June.

At the selection, Segre was tattooed with the serial number 75190. She was employed in forced labour in the Union ammunition factory, which belonged to Siemens, for about one year. During her imprisonment, she underwent three other selections. In January 1945, after the evacuation of the camp, she faced the death march towards Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. After some weeks spent there in terrible conditions, she was marched on to its satellite Malchow concentration camp where she was liberated by the Red Army on 1 May 1945. Out of the 776 Italian children aged 14 or younger who were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, only 35 survived.

After the Nazi Holocaust, Segre moved to the Marche region where she lived with her maternal grandparents, the only surviving members of her family. In 1948, she met Alfredo Belli Paci, a Catholic political prisoner who had also survived the Nazi concentration camps. The two married in 1951 and had three children.