Not Facing the Past: Restitutions and Reparations in Italy (1944‑2017), in "Yod. Revue des études hébraïques et juives", 21 (2018) (original) (raw)

After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-Fascist Italy

Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2014

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Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism

How did Italians treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. Italy's Jews experienced a century of dramatic changes, from emancipation in 1848, to the 1938 Racial Laws, wartime refuge in America and Palestine, and the rehabilitation of Holocaust survivors. This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

Cultural Restitution and the ‘Rediscovery’ of the Holocaust in Italy, 1989–2003

Journal of Modern European History, 2023

This article illustrates the role played by restitution in bringing about the first substantial changes in the political and public awareness of Italy's anti-Jewish persecutions after the end of the Cold War. More specifically, it analyses how political discourses changed between the years 1989 and 2003 vis-à-vis restitution campaigns on one side and historiographical advances on the other. This proves particularly relevant in the case of post-war Italy, which was exceptional in turning the restitution of national collections into a moment of cathartic rebirth while whitewashing - or all together forgetting - fascism's persecution of its Jewish and colonial subjects. As the article demonstrates, the conflation of international and domestic factors played a crucial role in pushing Italy (as well as several other countries) to start confronting – albeit partially – its antisemitic past. Restitution constituted only a piece of this puzzle, but a crucial one. It afforded the opportunity to document the involvement of many Italians in the persecution of their fellow citizens and to highlight the state’s responsibility for the deportations. Furthermore, it provided an international platform for voicing some of the most explicit admissions of accountability, which had until that point found little if any space in the domestic realm. Restitution thereby represented one of the most visible ways for Jewish communities to exercise their newly found political weight to foster the long-awaited recognition of Italy’s persecutory behaviour.

BOOK: Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism. Selected Finalist for National Jewish Book Award

How did Italians treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. Italy's Jews experienced a century of dramatic changes, from emancipation in 1848, to the 1938 Racial Laws, wartime refuge in America and Palestine, and the rehabilitation of Holocaust survivors. This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

Facing 1938: "How the Italian Jewish Community reacted to the Antisemetic Laws"

Drawing on a representative sample of the Italian Jewish press, this study explores a wide range of contemporaneous reactions to the Italian Fascist regime's antisemitic turn of 1938. It demonstrates not only the practical difficulties presented to Italian Jews of all persuasions, who had been collectively reduced to the status of non-citizens, but also the questions that were raised over their Italian and Jewish identities, and the relationship between the two. While for some, the solution lay in returning to and embracing their Jewishness, such a path remained troublesome for many within what had become a well integrated and heterogeneous community.

"Being a Fascist Jew in Autumn 1938: Self-portrayals from the "Discrimination" Requests Addressed to the Regime" in Italy’s Fascist Jews: Insights on an Unusual Scenario, eds. Michele Sarfatti, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, n.11 October 2017

Italy’s Fascist Jews: Insights on an Unusual Scenario, eds. Michele Sarfatti,, 2017

This article investigates how Fascists qualified as belonging to the " Jewish race " reacted to the proclamation of the " Laws for the Defense of the Race " and, in particular, how they tried to take advantage of the special legal treatment called " discrimination " , that allowed them to avoid some of the effects of the anti-Semitic legislation. In fact, together with its persecutory measures, the Royal Decree of November 17, 1938, granted some slight dispensations to " Jewish " Italian citizens who could prove to have special merits in the military, political or economic spheres. Drawing on a sample of Milanese Jews' personal dossiers submitted to the General Directorate for Demography and Race in 1938-1939, this article analyses the self-portrayals strategically devised by those who declared themselves Fascists, in order to illustrate the 'good Fascist' reference profiles they crafted and, indirectly, the varying conceptions of Fascism and Nation which had been at the basis of their closeness to the regime.