With far-right leaders, Italy remembers WWII roundup of Jews

ROME (AP) — Italy’s new right-wing political leadership has marked the 79th anniversary of the World War II roundup of Rome’s Jews with calls for such a horror to never occur again. Giorgia Meloni is expected to head Italy’s first far-right-led government since the war’s end. She phoned the leader of Rome’s Jewish community to commemorate the anniversary Saturday. On the morning of Oct. 16, 1943 during the German occupation of Italy, 1,259 people were arrested from Rome’s Ghetto and surrounding neighborhoods and brought to a military barracks near the Vatican bound for deportation to Auschwitz. Only 16 survived. Meloni’s political party Brothers of Italy traces its roots to a neo-fascist movement.