It was a Saturday afternoon many years ago—2005, to be exact. All of Faith and Light had converged on Assisi to mark the anniversary of the movement's birth in Italy. If I remember right, it was held in a sports complex, some enormous indoor facility that could hold us all. Dancing, singing, performances, speeches. Too many speeches, some people said. Too many testimonies for an audience that couldn't sustain attention for long. I disagreed with those critics then, because what happened that day was, in my view, extraordinary.
I was there with Flaminia—Minni to her friends—a girl with enormous clear eyes and an irrepressible need to move. So, true to form, that Umbrian weekend we spent on our feet. We walked, synchronized in body and spirit, even that afternoon of sunshine and words. I don't remember who introduced the elderly speaker, or how she was presented to us (Minni knows half of Faith and Light; people kept approaching to greet her, kiss her, embrace her), but the truth is I didn't listen at first. Neither did the vast crowd around us. The speaker, though, seemed unruffled. That's what struck me first—her composure. Despite the noise, amplified by echoes bouncing off the walls, she continued her story in a steady, warm voice. Passionate but serene.
Liliana was born into a nonpracticing Jewish family. At thirteen, she was forced onto Platform 21 at Milan's central station, suddenly becoming "old, alone, sad, and desperate." Six hundred and five deportees boarded the train that night bound for Germany—for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Five hundred eighty-five of them would evaporate in the long chimneys, including Alberto, the man holding the child's hand. Her father.
"On the same day they tear you from your family, the same day you step off a deportation train and arrive somewhere you don't know, somewhere you couldn't even find on a map, you find yourself naked alongside other wretched women who, like you, understand nothing of what is happening. There is nothing around you that doesn't terrify. You are horrified, and meanwhile the soldiers pass by sneering, or stand off in a corner watching the scene of these women being shaved, tattooed, already humiliated, tortured simply for being there, naked. That contempt was unbearable—that laughter at us, that punishment for the slightest disobedience: being made to kneel naked for hours. Nudity was constant, and I experienced it as a grave moral persecution, added to an already unbearable situation."
After surviving multiple selections, in January 1945 Liliana joined the procession of phantoms the Nazis marched from camp to camp at night (the death march), trying to hide them from the world's eyes. Though ill and reduced to seventy pounds, the girl survived even this trial. She was liberated near Ravensbrück on May 1st; four months later she returned to Milan. But nothing was easy then either. The recovery of body and soul was brutal—a recovery without which you cannot bear the enormity of a soft bed, a set table, a hot bath, the human gazes that settle on you, even as they no longer understand you.
Slowly, as Liliana Segre continued her story that Saturday in 2005, the noise of Faith and Light began to fade. We found ourselves held by the hand of this extraordinary girl.
What she told us was harsh, even to ears accustomed to the daily struggle. But it was a hardship never rhetorical—capable of finding signs of hope and glimmers of life even in the most desperate places, where death becomes most absurd and savage. But where, I found myself wondering, did this tangible faith in life and in human resilience come from? Liliana had survived, yes, but there had to be something more.
The answer came at last. Because there was indeed a moment when the girl Liliana chose not to become a beast herself, but a human being. It was the moment she chose to give meaning to the number 75,190 tattooed on her arm—a number now part of her forever.
"The commandant of the last camp, a cruel murderer, walked near me. Then he undressed, stood in his underwear, dressed himself as a civilian. He was going home to his children and wife. He certainly didn't notice me, because I was still just a Stück, a piece. When he threw his pistol at my feet, with all the hatred inside me, with all the violence I had endured flooding my body, I thought for an instant: 'Now I bend down, take the pistol, and in this absolute chaos, I kill him.' I had fed myself for so long only on malice and revenge. I thought shooting him was the right act, in the right moment; the fitting end to the story of which I had been protagonist and witness.
But it was only a moment. A moment of utmost importance, definitive in my life, that made me understand: in the extreme weakness that held me, my ethics and the love I had received as a child prevented me from becoming like that man. I could never have picked up the pistol and shot the commandant of Malchow. I had always chosen life. Once you make that choice, you cannot take life from anyone. And from then on, I was free."
Over the years I have heard Liliana Segre speak many times. I have read her words, followed her work. But the redemptive power of that encounter—between one girl facing evil alone and the communities of Faith and Light gathered there—remains the brightest jewel of them all.