Defaced Milan mural of Holocaust survivors has been removed

Italian artist and activist aleXsandro Palombo painted a mural of Italian senate member Liliana Segre and author Sami Modiano, both survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the extermination camp’s striped uniform with bullet proof jackets featuring the yellow star of David that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis.

He unveiled the artwork in September, ahead of the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks that sparked the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza.

Situated in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto, the mural was vandalised on 11 November. The faces and yellow stars of the mural have now been scratched off of the mural.

Palombo confirmed this week that the mural has been removed. He said he was “profoundly embarrassed” by the removal and called it an “an offense after the offense, the best way to hide anti-Semitism at a time when anti-Semitism is spreading and someone has also decided to deny honorary citizenship to a woman who survived the Holocaust”.

His last comment refers to Pinero, a small town near Turin in Italy where Segre, the woman depicted in the mural, was rejected for honorary citizenship. Segre is an outspoken public educator on the Holocaust and was named senator for life in Italy in 2018.

Segre was put forward for the honour in Pinero as a symbol of the fight against antisemitism in Italy following Mayor Luca Salvai, a member of the 5 Star Movement displaying a Palestinian flag from the town hall.

Palombo created his mural of Segre and Modiano in response to a pro-Palestine march that had taken place in September to recognise a year since the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s resultant assault on Gaza. One sign pointed out Segre, 94, who was named a senator for life in 2018 as a “Zionist agent”.

Palombo posted on Instagram “Anti-Semitism, History Repeating Itself” alongside “Liliana Segre and Sami Modiano, two of the last witnesses and survivors of the horrors of the Shoah” shortly after creating the mural.

Following the removal of the defaced mural, Ignazio La Russa, president of the senate said: “A coat of white paint applied by some idiot can erase a mural but not the memory. In firmly condemning a vile act, we reiterate our strong no to anti-Semitism and extend our sincere solidarity to Senator Liliana Segre and Sami Modiano.”

At the time of the defacement, the Fondazione Museo della Shoah, Italy’s Holocaust memorial museum said: “These acts not only harm art, but undermine the value of Memory, which is fundamental for building a conscious and just society.”

Palombo is known for his political street art. Last year, just over a month after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, he created a mural depicting Anne Frank side by side with a Gazan girl. He posted this new mural alongside another of a Gazan boy dressed up as a member of Hamas with an adult terrorist pointing their guns at an infamous image of a Holocaust-era boy.

“The antisemitic fury unleashed by Hamas is overwhelming Jews in every part of the world, this horror that re-emerges from the past must make us all reflect because it undermines freedom, security and the future of us all. Terrorism is the very denial of humanity and has nothing to do with resistance, it uses people with aim to divide and drag them into the abyss of its evil, into an infernal vortex that has no end. There can be no peace until terrorism is eradicated; legitimise it means condemning to death the whole humanity,” Palombo wrote at the time.

Another Palombo mural following October 7 has also been defaced. A new mural revealed on the anniversary which depicted Vlada Patapov escaping the Hamas attack was defaced almost immediately.