Italian Jews From Emancipation To The Racial Laws

The Emancipation signalled the beginning of Jewish integration in Italy, a process that continued until 1938 when the Racial Laws were put into effect. In this book, Bettin examines the debate between integration and assimilation in the early twentieth century and Jewish culture to trace the 'rebirth of Judaism' that characterized the period.

How did Italy 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 This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

From 1938 until 1943 - before the German occupation and accompanying Holocaust - Fascist Italy drafted and enforced a comprehensive set of anti-Semitic laws. Notwithstanding later rationalizations, the laws were administered with a high degree of severity and resulted in serious damage to the Italian Jewish community. Written from the perspective of an American legal scholar, this book constitutes the first truly comprehensive survey of the Race Laws in the English language. Based on an exhaustive review of Italian legal, administrative and judicial sources, together with archives of the Italian Jewish community, Professor Michael A. Livingston demonstrates the zeal but also the occasional ambivalence and contradictions with which the Race Laws were applied by the Italian legal order and ordinary citizens. Although frequently depressing, the history of the Race Laws contains numerous examples of personal courage and idealism, providing a useful and timely study of what happens when otherwise decent people are confronted with an evil and unjust legal order.

This history of Italy's Jews under the shadow of the Holocaust examines the lives of five Jewish families: the Ovazzas, who propered under Mussolini and whose patriarch became a prominent fascist; the Foas, whose children included both an antifascist activist and a Fascist Party member, the DiVerolis who struggled for survival in the ghetto; the Teglios, one of whom worked with the Catholic Church to save hundreds of Jews; and the Schonheits, who were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck.

Publisher Description

The volume investigates the interconnections between the Italian Jewish worlds and wider European and Mediterranean circles, situating the Italian Jewish experience within a transregional and transnational context mindful of the complex set of networks, relations, and loyalties that characterized Jewish diasporic life. Preceded by a methodological introduction by the editors, the chapters address rabbinic connections and ties of communal solidarity in the early modern period, and examine the circulation of Hebrew books and the overlap of national and transnational identities after emancipation. For the twentieth century, this volume additionally explores the Italian side of the Wissenschaft des Judentums; the role of international Jewish agencies in the years of Fascist racial persecution; the interactions between Italian Jewry, JDPs and Zionist envoys after Word War II; and the impact of Zionism in transforming modern Jewish identities.

From 1938 until 1943 before the German occupation and accompanying Holocaust Fascist Italy drafted and enforced a comprehensive set of anti-Semitic laws. Notwithstanding later rationalizations, the laws were enforced and administered with a high degree of severity and resulted in serious, and in some cases permanent, damage to the Italian Jewish community. Written from the perspective of an American legal scholar, this book constitutes the first truly comprehensive survey of the Race Laws in the English language. Based on an exhaustive review of Italian legal, administrative, and judicial sources, together with archives of the Italian Jewish community, Professor Michael A. Livingston demonstrates the zeal but also the occasional ambivalence and contradictions with which the Race Laws were applied and assimilated by the Italian legal order and ordinary citizens. Although frequently depressing, the history of the Race Laws also involves numerous examples of personal courage and idealism, and provides a useful and timely study of what happens when otherwise decent people are confronted with an evil and unjust legal order."

Using popular literature as a window on Italian society and its values, Lynn Gunzberg explores the representation of Jews in novels and poetry written by non-Jews from the beginning of the Risorgimento in the early 1800s to the enactment of the Fascist racial laws in 1938. She shows how the literature of that period contradicts the popular belief that anti-Semitism simply did not exist in Italy until late in the Fascist period.

Provides a comprehensive history from the rise of fascism in 1922 to its defeat in 1945. The author uses statistical evidence to document how the Italian social climate changed from relatively just to irredeemably prejudicial. He demonstrates that Rome did not simply follow the lead of Berlin.

Perhaps the most important writer to emerge from the death camps, Primo Levi is known for "Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, " and the classic "The Periodic Table." Angier has spent nearly ten years writing this meticulously researched, vivid, and moving biography.