The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution

440 Pages·2006·26.32 MB·English

by  Michele Sarfatti, John and Anne C. Tedeschi

The Jews in Mussolini's Italy
From Equality to Persecution
De Michele Sarfatti
: a : is Translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi
The Jews in
Mussolini’s Italy
GEORGE L2MOsseE
SERIES IN MODERN BURQOPEAN CULTURAL
AND INTELLEG@TUAL RIS LORY
Advisory Board
Steven E. Aschheim
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Annette Becker
Université Paris X—Nanterre
Christopher Browning
University ofN orth Carolina at Chapel Hill
Natalie Zemon Davis
University of Toronto
Saul Friedlander
University of California, Los Angeles
Emilio Gentile
Universita di Roma “La Sapienza”
Gert Hekma
University of Amsterdam
Stanley G. Payne
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Anson Rabinbach
Princeton University
David J. Sorkin
University of Wisconsin—Madison
John S. Tortorice
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Joan Wallach Scott
Institutfeo rA dvanced Study
Jay Winter
Yale University
The Jews in
Mussolini’s Italy
From Equality to Persecution
VISHCSHEASS Es oS AR AG).L at
Translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi
TELE UMNT VEE eRES nil NaOH anaClOe UNsTS T INS PAR EISES
This book has been published with the support of the
George L. Mosse Foundation at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
The translation of this work has been funded by sEps
SEGRETARIATO EUROPEO PER LE PUBBLICAZIONI SCIENTIFICHE
SEGRETARIATO EUROPEO PER LE PUBELICAZIONS SCIENTIFICHE
Via Val d’Aposa 7 — 40123 Bologna — Italy
[email protected] — www.seps.it
The University of Wisconsin Press
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Copyright © 2006
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sarfatti, Michele.
[Ebrei nell’Italia fascista. English]
The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: from equality to persecution / Michele
Sarfatti; translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi.
p. cm. — (George L. Mosse series in modern European cultural
and intellectual history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-I3: 978-O-299-21730-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Jews—Italy—History—2oth century. 2. Jews—Persecutions—Italy.
3. World War, 1939-1945—Deportations from Italy. 4. Holocaust,
Jewish (1939-1945)—Italy. 5. Italy—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
II. Series.
DS135.18822613 2006
305.892 404509041—dc22
2005033028
GAOSNSICESNGIES
TO Sue OEM ES DEAT@IN IS ey mevalil
INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH HDITION / Ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS / Xill
The Jews at the Coming of Fascism / 3
The Demography of Jewish Life: The City, Textiles,
and Books / 19
The Attack on Jewish Equality (1922-1936) / 42
The Attack on Jewish Rights (1936-1943) / 95
The Assault on Jewish Lives (1943-1945) / 178
APPENDIX . Angelo Sereni’s Report to the Congress of
Italian Jewish Communities (1925) / 213
APPENDIX . Report on the Activities of the Union of the
Italian Jewish Communities from June 1933 to
September 1934 / 228
APPENDIX . Italy’s Rabbis to Their Brethren (1937) / 251
. Report to the Women’s Sections of DELASEM,
APPENDIX
October 1941 / 261
[Raffaele Jona] “Relazione n. 2” [March 1945] / 270
APPENDIX 54
. The Failed Attempt of the World Jewish Congress
APPENDIX
to Save Italian Jews in 1943 / 281
NOTES / 287
INDEX / 397
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Le IRE SSIERSER AOsGNI S
MAPS
i . Jews in Italy / 118
2. The Shoah in Italy / 182
PEO OS
. Decree of Emancipation granting full civil and political rights to the
Jews of Modena and Reggio Emilia / 79
. First Italian edition of the anti-Semitic pamphlet, “Protocols of the
Elders of Zion” / 80
. The first issue of the racist journal La Difesa della Razza / 81
. “Ghetto industrialist” / 82
. Gallery of “International Jewish Conspirators” / 83
. The Fascist racial census of August 1938 / 84
. Advertisement offering services to families wishing to establish their
NDBWISI A W
“Aryan” heritage / 85
. Certification of the expulsion from the Italian army of Giovanni
Ravenna / 86
. Expulsion of Emilio Brull from the Fascist Party / 87
. Italian Society of Authors and Publishers informs playwright
Sabatino Lopez that plays by Jewish writers can no longer
be staged / 88
. Jewish refugees receive agricultural training / 89
. Internment camp for foreign Jews at Ferramonti / 89
. Victims of the Holocaust / 90
. A class from the Jewish school in Florence / 91
Every Jew Isa-spy ./ 91
. Italian Jews apprehended in Varese / 92
Vil
Vill ILLUSTRATIONS
17. Paolo Orano, Gli Ebrei in Italia / 93
18. Ettore Ovazza, Il problema ebraico. Risposta a Paolo Orano / 94
TABLES
1. Jews in Italy between 1910 and 1943 / 20
2. Population descended from at least one Jewish or ex-Jewish
parent / 24
3. Jews in Italy in 1931 by occupation of heads of families / 34
4. Population descended from at least one Jewish or ex-Jewish parent
by economic category / 36
5. Population descended from at least one Jewish or ex-Jewish parent
by economic activity and professional position / 38
6. Jews and victims of the persecutions in Italy, 1938-1943 / 136
LING TGRI@ MDW Cale aN
to the English Edition
This book is a history of the Italian Jews covering the rise of Fascism to
power in 1922 to its ultimate defeat in 1945.
From the second half of the nineteenth century to the first quarter of
the twentieth Italian Jews had been masters of their own destiny. After
their juridical emancipation, they spread throughout the country, mov-
ing especially to the larger and more modern cities. They were not split
between reformed and orthodox; rather, they progressively transformed
their religion from something public to a private, family centered “fact.”
Jews became professors, industrialists, and government ministers through-
out the country, but in Rome many also followed the humble calling of
street vendor. Italian Jews numbered between forty and fifty thousand dur-
ing the period we are discussing here: one out of a thousand in the total
population.
Under the Fascist dictatorship, Jews increasingly became the object of
governmental decisions that did not distinguish between rich and poor,
Fascist and anti-Fascist, the religiously observant and the anti-rabbinical.
Benito Mussolini began by recreating problematic relations between Jews
and the State. In 1938, he decided to deprive them oft heir rights and live-
lihood and drive them from the peninsula; and in 1943, when the defeat
of the Axis by now seemed certain, he began to arrest them and collab-
orated with his German ally in their near annihilation abroad at the hands
of specialized killers.
Thus, the history of Italian Jews between 1922-45 was progressively less
the story of Jewish historical developments—their concentration in large
urban centers, their tendency toward the professions, the evolution of their
religiosity, the changes experienced in their Jewish identity—and increas-
ingly an account of their treatment at the hands of the State and society.