A Holocaust survivor presided over the opening of Italy’s new parliament on Thursday, less than one month after Italy elected its most right-wing coalition since the Second World War under Giorgia Meloni. 

Liliana Segre, 92, opened the session in the upper chamber and formally launched the sequence of events that will bring the Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Italy’s elections on September 25, to power. 

The senator-for-life, and the only member of her Jewish family to survive Auschwitz concentration camp, marvelled at the symbolic value of her overseeing this historic new chapter for Italy and recalled the dangers of fascism. 

 “Today, I am particularly moved by the role that fate holds for me,” Ms Segre told the hushed chamber. “In this month of October, which marks the centenary of the March on Rome that began the fascist dictatorship [of Benito Mussolini], it falls to me to temporarily assume the presidency of this temple of democracy, which is the Senate of the Republic. 

“It is impossible for me not to feel a kind of vertigo remembering that the same little girl who, on a day like this in 1938, disconsolate and lost, was forced by racist laws to leave her empty desk at primary school, is now, by a strange twist of fate, at the most prestigious desk in the senate.” 

Regarding upcoming legislature, Ms Segre concluded by encouraging civilised debate that does not devolve into hateful speech and respects the Italian constitution. 

At the end of her emotional speech, she received a standing ovation from 200 senators, including the Brothers of Italy delegation headed by newly-elected house speaker Ignazio La Russa, who once proudly showed off his collection of Mussolini memorabilia.