Berlusconi Hitler comparison sparks storm

(By Christopher Livesay) (ANSA) – Rome, November 6 – Silvio Berlusconi sparked a storm Wednesday over remarks that his children have told him they feel like Jewish families must have under Hitler because of the alleged judicial persecution against him. “My children say they feel like the Jewish families must have felt in Germany during Hitler’s regime,” the ex-premier and media mogul told journalist Bruno Vespa in an interview for a forthcoming book. Berlusconi, 77, is set to serve one year of community service for a four-year tax-fraud sentence – cut by an amnesty – which also carries a ban from office. He is appealing a six-year sentence for sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of power to cover it up; and a one-year sentence for involvement in the publication of an illegally obtained wiretap.

The three-time premier, who is threatening to bring Italy’s unprecedented right-left government down if the office ban is enforced, has also been indicted on charges of bribing a Senator to switch sides. Throughout more than 20 legal cases since he first swept to victory in 1994, Berlusconi has said he is the victim of leftwing elements in the judiciary.

Among the first to lambast the ex-premier were prominent members of Italy’s Jewish community.

“(The comparison) is not only inappropriate and incomprehensible but also offensive to the memory of those who were deprived of all rights and, after unutterable and atrocious suffering, their lives,” said Renzo Gattegna, the president of Italy’s Union of Jewish Communities, echoed by the president of Rome’s Jewish community, among the oldest in the Diaspora. “We are indignant after the words of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi. We maintain that the comparison made with the Jewish people under the persecution of Hitler, whose project was extermination, is absolutely out of place. We trust in its rectification without delay,” said Riccardo Pacifici. No apologies came as Berlusconi and supporters from his center-right People of Freedom (PdL) party defended the remarks.

“This argument is blatantly specious, based on a statement extrapolated from its ample context,” said Berlusconi. “My personal history, my friendship with Israel, my actions in office to help the State of Israel, don’t allow for any doubt regarding my knowledge of the tragedy of the Holocaust and my respect for the Jewish people”.

The premier’s party whip in the House, Renato Brunetta, doubled down on Berlusconi’s comments. “Comparing the pain of one’s children…to the persecution of the Jews does not trivialize an enormous tragedy. Rather, it shows how much President Berlusconi shares their pain,” he said.

“Both his parents raised Berlusconi to feel himself spiritually a Jew”. PdL MP Luca d’Alessandro, secretary of the House justice committee, called the remarks “justified” amid a maelstrom of rebuke from the center-left Democratic Party (PD), the senior members in the grand-coalition government joined by junior members from the PdL. “Instead of asking the Italian people to forgive him for his tax-fraud conviction, he ventures to make appalling comparisons with the Holocaust,” said PD MP Danilo Leva, a lawyer who heads the PD’s Justice Forum. “Is being equal before the law and respecting the rule of law the same as the persecution of the Jews?” he added rhetorically. The most biting admonition came from former PD Senator Roberto Della Seta, who said he should serve his court-ordered community service at the Holocaust’s most notorious concentration camp.

“Let’s send him to Auschwitz, where he can witness for a few months what kind of persecution the Nazis inflicted on the Jews,” said Roberto Della Seta, a member of the Green Italia movement. The former Senator went on to allude to an upcoming vote among Senate whips later this month on whether to strip Berlusconi of his parliamentary seat: “His words confirm his utter unworthiness of serving in any public role. Let’s hope that this miserable anomaly is rectified on November 27”.

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