A Polish-born Holocaust survivor opened a book fair in Italy to a standing ovation, after organizers agreed to ban a publisher linked to a neo-fascist group.
Halina Birenbaum, an 89-year-old poet who lives in Israel, was quoted by Italy’s Corriere della Sera daily as saying “this is more proof for me that evil will not win.”
Birenbaum and the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum had threatened to boycott the 2019 Turin International Book Fair if it included the Altaforte publishing house, whose director is linked to the neo-fascist CasaPound party.
“We consider our presence incompatible with that of a neo-fascist publishing house that openly spreads a revisionist culture,” read a letter signed by Birenbaum and others including Piotr Cywinski, director of the state museum in Poland.
“In my life I suffered too much to be in the same place with people who propagate ideas that caused me to lose all of my family,” Birenbaum said.
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