There will be no historical revisionism of the reign of Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III and his "shameful" support for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's racial laws targeting Jews from 1939-1944, Senate speaker Pietro Grasso said on Monday.
"A mature, democratic country must be able to face up to its past. "The responsibilities before, during and after fascism and the signing of the shameful racial laws do not allow for any revisionism of the figure and actions of Victor Emmanuel III," Grasso stated.
Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in 1946 in favour of his son in an unsuccessful bid to preserve the monarchy and died in exile in Egypt in 1947. Umberto II ruled just a few weeks before Italians rejected the monarchy in a referendum and voted to make the country a republic.
Only in 2002 did Italy lift a ban written into the country's post-World War II constitution that barred male descendants of the royal House of Savoy from Italian soil because of its support for Mussolini.
Earlier on Monday, Grasso ruled out the burial of King Victor Emmanuel III's remains in Rome's ancient Pantheon monument, where Italy's first two Savoy kings, Victor Emmanuel II and Umberto I, and its first queen, Margherita, are buried.
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