ROME —
Italy's gaffe-prone former premier Silvio Berlusconi sparked outrage Sunday
with remarks praising wartime dictator Benito Mussolini despite Il Duce's
persecution of Jews and allowing thousands to be deported to Auschwitz.
 |
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi on January
9, 2013 (AFP/File,
Tiziana Fabi)
|
Starting in
1938, Mussolini promulgated decrees known collectively as racial laws that
barred Jews from the civil service, the armed forces and the National Fascist
Party. The laws also banned intermarriage.
Mussolini's
Italy participated in the deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz death camp, and
an estimated 7,500 are estimated to have been victims of the Holocaust.
Italy
"does not have the same responsibilities as Germany," said
Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon known for ill-considered outbursts.
On
Saturday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany had "an everlasting
responsibility for the crimes of (the Nazis)".
The head of
Italy's Jewish community, Renzo Gattegna, hit out at Berlusconi's remarks, saying
they were "not only superficial and inopportune, but also... devoid of any
moral meaning or historical foundation."
Gattegna,
head of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, added: "The persecution
and the racist anti-Semitic laws of Italy originated well before the war and
were applied with full autonomy under the... fascist regime, later an ally and
willing and conscious accomplice of Nazi Germany."
He said the
remarks showed "the extent to which Italy still has trouble seriously
accepting its own history and its own responsibilities".
Centre-left
politicians also voiced outrage over Berlusconi's comments.
"Berlusconi's
words are a disgrace and an insult to history and memory. He should apologise
to the Italian people today," Dario Francheschini, head of the centre-left
Democratic Party, said in a Twitter message.
His party
is tipped to win the elections set for February 24-25.
Left-wing
MEP Debora Serracchiani said in a statement: "It is simply disgusting that
even on Remembrance Day Berlusconi goes about rehabilitating the actions of the
dictator who dragged Italy into the Second World War."
Antonio Di
Petro, head of the small anti-corruption Italy of Values party, dismissed
Berlusconi as "nothing more than a caricature" of Mussolini.
The
flamboyant, scandal-plagued 76-year-old, who has had three stints as prime
minister, heads the centre-right People of Freedom Party (PDL) but has not
decided whether to seek a fourth term or settle for a cabinet post if the party
wins in February.
The head of
the PDL's parliamentary group, Fabrizio Cicchitto, came to Berlusconi's
defence, saying: "The fascist dictatorship never attained the horror of
that of the Nazis or the Russians."
He said the
left's reactions were politically motivated and that "Berlusconi was obviously
talking about (Mussolini's) social aid policies and support for families."
Berlusconi's
coalition ally, the populist Northern League party, declined to be drawn into
the debate. "We are in an election campaign, I understand the controversy,
but I do not want to feed it," said the League's head Roberto Maroni.
Berlusconi
himself sought to clarify his comments later on Sunday. "My historical
analyses have always been based on the condemnation of dictatorships," he
said in a statement, noting that he was "a historical friend of
Israel."
Berlusconi's
long history of gaffes includes an earlier comment about Il Duce:
"Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation
in internal exile," he told an Italian magazine in 2003.
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