Sanremo, 28 April 2025 – ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell characterised the modern history of Sanremo as “a drama in four acts” as he spoke at the 105th anniversary of the Sanremo Peace Conference on Saturday evening in the Grand Hotel des Anglais in Sanremo, Italy.
“It was exactly 105 years ago that the San Remo Resolution that promised a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine was signed here, thus paving the way for the rebirth of the Jewish state in 1948,” he explained. “But every story has a dark chapter and Sanremo is no exception,” he continued. During the Second World War, while millions of Jews were being slaughtered in Nazi concentration camps, the regional SS headquarters was located in Villa Devachan, the very same building where the Peace Conference had taken place less than twenty-five years before. Today the villa is more known for the torture and execution of 14 Italian partisans by the Nazis than for its role in the Peace Conference.
After the war many of the Jews who had survived the Shoah tried desperately to find a safe haven in Palestine. The first ships to bring the Jewish survivors from Europe to Palestine took sail from the ports of Liguria, from La Spezia and Savona, not far from Sanremo, as thousands of survivors found refuge in what would 1948 become the modern State of Israel.
“The fourth act of this redemptive story starts now as we are looking at ways of establishing a permanent heritage site and education centre here in Sanremo,” Tomas Sandell explained. Whilst modern Israel is today being accused of land grabbing and settler colonialism what happened here in Sanremo in 1920 was the exact opposite as the acknowledgment of the rights of the Jewish people to reconstitute their national home in Eretz Israel after more than 1800 years in exile was enshrined into international law. This was in fact the beginning of the decolonisation process as it illustrated the new principal of national self-determination as called for by US President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace conference in 1919.
While most of the other mandate areas established in 1920 which later gave birth to sovereign states such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq have experienced major crisis and could today be considered failed states, the modern State of Israel is a vibrant democracy with a dynamic economy despite ongoing hostilities from terrorist groups and hostile neighbours.
The San Remo Peace Conference was unique in that it brought together both Jewish and Arab delegations to consider a joint future in the Middle East. “At this pivotal moment in world history more such meetings places are needed in order to create a peaceful future in the Middle East,” Sandell concluded.
The conference was co-hosted by the Associazione Italia – Israele Savona and Associazione Italia – Israele Ventimiglia Sanremo International.
