The Jewish community of Rome on Tuesday boycotted the annual Liberation March, a public holiday in Italy, which marks tthe country’s liberation from German occupation and fascist rule at the end of WWII.

Ruth Dureghello, president of the Jewish Community , explained the boycott by accusing the Anpi (National Association of Italian Partisans) to tolerate and indeed encourage the participation in the march of extremist Palestinian groups which use the pretext of April 25 to to protest against Israel.

Jews of Rome remember the anniversary on their own at a garrison in Balbo Street, the location which housed the Jewish Brigade who also fought against Nazism in Italy.

“As an Italian and a Roman, I no longer feel that the partisans organization, which denies the contribution of the Jewish Brigade to the fight against Nazi Fascism, represents me,” Dureghello said.

“In wake of the ANPI decision to erase history and to allow the heirs of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who made an alliance with Hitler… to participate in the march with their flags, and after repeated harassment in previous years, the Jewish community of Rome decided to organize a separate demonstration to mark the liberation,’’ the Jewish community said.

In 2014, a group of pro-Palestinian supporters verbally attacked Jewish Brigade marchers and tried to assault them physically. This year, the Palestinian groups, Fronte Palestina, Rete Romana Palestina, and Rappresentanza Palestina, are among the organizers of the parade.

The Palestinian groups are presenting Palestine as an occupied country to free, like Europe in the 1940s, and the Jewish Brigade as the occupying power, Israel.

Tuesday morning, stickers recalling the Jewish brigade group have appeared on numerous pillars and walls of ROME. "Let's not forget the Jewish Brigade!", is written on the stickers.

ANED, the national association of former Italian political deportees from Nazi concentration camps, announced that it would not attend like every year the April 25 march because of the ban on the Jewish Brigade.

“Representing former Nazi camp deportees, both political and racial, we cannot accept that the spirit of this celebration is distorted and that people who took part in the partisan struggle and Liberation of Italy are banned exclusively due to intolerance,” ANED wrote in a statement.

Enzo Sereni was 39 years old when he was shot at Dachau concentration camp in November 1944. He was captured by the Germans a few months earlier, in May, in Tuscany, where he parachuted to join the partisans.

Sereni belonged to a family of the high Roma bourgeoisie and was one of the first Italian Zionists. He arrived in Palestine in 1927, where he participated in the foundation of kibbutz Givat Brenner.

In May 1944, he returned to Italy in the forefront of the Liberation War against the Nazis with the Jewish Brigade, which had entered into action on the Tuscan-Roman Apennines alongside the partisans. Sereni is unanimously recognized as a victim of Resistance and as a partisan of the Jewish Brigade.

Sereni’s story is a symbol story to understands the reasons why the flag of the Jewish Brigade should take part in the celebrations for the Liberation of Italy. Remembering the victims of the Brigade (forty in number ) who, between March and April 1945, contributed to the Liberation of |Italy from the Fascism and Nazism.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem expressed support for the decision not to take part in the Rome march. The association of Palestinians in the procession is a grave injustice that prevents Jews from participating. Jews are right not to participate in a procession that gives rise to historical confusion."