Jews in Italy are not living well and even young Jewish children have to be escorted from their kindergartens amid rising antisemitism, the new head of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) said Monday.

“In Italy, we Jews don’t live well. Or rather, we live well thanks to the police. Schools are guarded with bars on the windows, students must be escorted if they have to leave, and so, from kindergarten to university, they face serious problems, even in their own manifestations of Judaism. Not to mention the representatives” of the communities, “who must go around escorted. It’s not a calm situation,” said the new president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Livia Ottolenghi, at a press conference in Rome.