1,500 Run in Rome Road Race Highlighting Holocaust History
Image by Getty Images
ROME (JTA) – Hundreds of people ran through the streets of downtown Rome over the weekend to commemorate the Holocaust and look to the future.
Dubbed “Run for Mem”, Sunday’s road race was part of a wide range of events on and around International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place on January 27, the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp.
Organizers said around 1,500 participants took part.
Ranging in age from young people to grandparents, the runners wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the race’s slogan, “Race for Remembrance, Looking Ahead.”
The race followed two itineraries starting and ending near the city’s main synagogue in Rome’s old Jewish ghetto and taking runners past sites related to the World War II persecution or deportation of Jews. On hand was Shaul Ladany, an Israeli athlete who survived the Holocaust and also survived the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
“Today we are here for something important,” he told the media. “To defend memory, and to make it a value that is ever more alive.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
