ROME (JTA) — The new president of Italy’s Lazio region chose Israel for her first official trip abroad.
Renata Polverini, on her trip Sunday and Monday, accompanied 40 high school pupils who had won an annual contest sponsored by the Lazio region for projects dealing with Holocaust memory "as the heritage of humanity."
The group visited Yad Vashem and the Shimon Peres Center for Peace, as well as other sites.
Rome is located in Lazio, and Rome’s chief rabbi and the president of the Rome Jewish community also took part in the trip.
During her visit, Polverini said she would return to Israel in July to visit Israel’s Arrow Ecology waste treatment company to discuss waste management projects in Lazio.
Before leaving for Israel, Polverini and Rome’s mayor joined the Rome Jewish community last Friday for a ceremony in Rome marking the 66th anniversary of the reopening of the city’s main synagogue in 1944 following its closure during World War II.
