ROME - A march is planned in the heart of Rome for Oct 18, to commemorate the deportation of the Roman Jewish population on Oct 16 1943.

Each year since 1994, the Community of Sant’Egidio, alongside the Jewish Community of Rome, have organised the event in an effort to ensure that the past is never forgotten.

On that day in 1943, more than one thousand Jews were marched from the ghetto area through to the Military College in Trastevere where they were loaded onto trains headed for Auschwitz. Only 16 would ever return home.

One of those 16 survivors, Enzo Camerino, will be participating in Saturday’s march. Alongside him will be hundreds of children from Roman schools, Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo di Segni,  and Mayor Ignazio Mariano.

Participants will follow, in silence, a route that takes in the same streets as the deportees walked in 1943, beginning in Piazza Santa Maria di Trastevere at 7pm, and ending on Largo 16 Ottobre 1943, next to the synagogue.