Italy: Auschwitz survivor gets covid-19 vaccine in Rome

Rome: Auschwitz survivor Sami Modiano, aged 90, was vaccinated against covid-19 in Rome today, announced the Lazio region president Nicola Zingaretti on social media.

Zingaretti published a photograph of Modiano, who received the covid-19 vaccine along with this wife Selma, in what the Lazio governor described as an “image of faith and hope for everyone.”

Born in 1930 on the island of Rhodes, when it was under Italian occupation, Sami Modiano was deported together with his father Jacob and his sister Lucia to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in 1944.

He was the only member of his family to survive and was one of just 25 survivors of the entire Rhodes Jewish community.

Modiano returned to Auschwitz for the first time in 2005 and since then he has dedicated himself to educating others, including school children, with his testimony.

In 2013 he published his memoir, Per questo ho vissuto, in which he describes the horrors of Auschwitz, and last year on his 90th birthday Modiano was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the highest honour for an Italian citizen.