Austria: commemoration marking the anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen

On 15 May 2022 the Italian Ambassador to Austria, Stefano Beltrame, attended the official commemoration marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp. A delegation of about 500 Italians led by Dario Venegoni, President of ANED (the national association of deportees to Nazi concentration camps), also took part.

Attendees included representatives of ANPI (the national association of Italian partisans) and of Italian municipalities, including Florence and Verona, bearing their towns' standards. All those present paid homage to those "Italians who suffered and died for human dignity" in Mauthausen, as inscribed on the monument dedicated to their memory.

Another ceremony took place at the monument to the Ukrainian victims. The French Ambassador to Austria, Gilles Pécout, laid a floral wreath in the name of the European Union, in the presence of the Member States' Ambassadors.

The Embassy of Italy also paid tribute to the Italian military victims (1,766 fell in the First World War and 1,254 in the Second) in the international war cemetery located near Mauthausen concentration camp.