Based on documents so far unpublished (minutes of the Academy's meetings, letters, memorials), the essay extends the knowledge about the exclusion of Jewish scholars from the Accademia d'ltalia, ...looking into the case of the famous mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita. In 1933 and 1934 his candidacy was proposed to the scientific section of the Academy by Francesco Severi, a mathematician himself, colleague of Levi-Civita at Rome University. In both cases the candidacy was rejected. The exclusion of Levi-Civita was officially justified on the grounds of "political reasons", namely his antifascist reputation. As a matter of fact, however, documentation now available indicates that since 1929 there was also against him an unspoken objection, related to his Jewish descent. This fact might have exerted a significant influence on the academic verdict.
It can approximately be calculated that about 2500-3000 Oriental Jews settled in Italy in the interwar period, chiefly in Milan (1200-1300) and in Trieste (800) and to a lesser extent in Leghorn ...(120), Genoa (60) and Rome (65).) Smaller groups were resident in Florence, Bolonia, Venice, Padua, Naples, Turin. The "Great depression" in the early thirties, and above all the racial legislation in 1938 reduced by about one third the Jewish Oriental colony. So in 1942, when the last reliable census was carried out, a high rate of foreign Jews had already left for different countries. Conversely, during the war until September 1943 some Oriental Jews, whose number is not precisely known, who where Italian citizens living in the Nazi occupied countries were repatriated by the Italian Authorities. On the whole, at least 568 Oriental Jews were victims of the Shoah deported or killed in Italy. Less than 10% survived deportation.
In 1937 the important nucleus of Jewish residents in Sanremo made pressured on the Israelite community in Genova in order to set up the Sanremo unit. The three oratories funtioning in Sanremo were ...officiated by a rabbi sent from Genova. On the eve of the racial laws, the unit had at least 130 registered members. Foreing Jews were more numerous. In all, there were about 250 Jews on the Riviera. The anti-racial measures of September 1938 and the consequent decree of expulsion caused the immediate departure of a large part of the foreing Jews; this situation induced the community of Genova to close down the Sanremo unit in 1939. To confirm the anomalous situation on the Riviera one must take into account the five confirmed cases of suicide, which constitute a high percentage as nothing simular can be found on a national level. From the beginnig of 1938 the number of conversions inflicted great difficulty upon a now disorganized nucleus. The Germans availing themselves of important Italian collaboration, succeeded in arresting and deporting about 50 Jews from the Riviera, wiping out for ever their dreams and ambitions, as well as putting an end to their historical presence.
What was the social economic situation of the Italian Jewish community during the Thirties and? Is it possible to single out a specific economic behaviour? The documents produced by the Fascist ...regime during the persecutions were have been the main source of this study: since November 1938 all the "Jews" who managed business activities as retailers and wholesale dealers, peddlers or in small and medium enterprises were forced to self-denounce their activity. The role played by Jews in the banking system and in the big joint-stock companies has been instead reconstructed by cross-checking the financial yearbooks regularly published in those years with the documents of the economic persecution of the following years (1943-45). The data presented clearly shows the impossibility to talk about those who were subjected persecution in terms of a united and socially homogeneous microcosm. On the contrary the image derived from this data is that of a very differentiated and multi-faced situation both from a geographical and a socio-economic point of view.
The Urbisaglia camp for war civilian detainees was among the first to be put in operation in June 1940 in a section of the villa of the Giustiniani-Bandini princes. Under the jurisdiction of the ...Interior Ministry, this camp hosted until September 1943 about a hundred detainees of different categories: "Italian Jews", "citizens of hostile countries", "foreign and stateless Jews", "former Yugoslavs", etc. The article, after laying out a summary picture of conditions that led to the imprisonment of Italian Jews by the Fascist regime, describes the events in the Urbisaglia camp, one of the main places of detention for Italian Jews. A pointed depiction of life in the camp is drawn from two unpublished letters written to members of his family in June 1940 by Carlo Alberto Viterbo (1889-1974), editor of «Israel» from 1944 to 1974 and former President of the Italian Zionist Federation.
The essay explores the role and relevance of language in the process of modern assimilation of the Jews of Italy and in the emergence of an Italian Jewish « subculture ». Different sources - such as ...studies on Italian Jewish jargons, theories on the transformation of language by Jewish linguists, and literary representations of the Italian Jewish world by Umberto Saba, Natalia Ginzburg and Giorgio Bassani - delineate an itineray through the linguistic life of Italian Jews, showing its role for the Jewish community as a realm of residual identification and continuous transformation.
According to traditionalist catholic thinkers, the French revolution abruptly and violently substituted a political and social order based upon the will of God for an arbitrary order founded on the ...will of man. All the evils of the Revolution, i.e. modernity and secularism, come from the inspiring principles of the Enlightment philosophy. Only the Church has access to God's revelation and consequently, only the Church can verify and sanction the legitimacy of political power. Traditionalists were convinced that the urgent and paramount task after the Revolution was to restore the old Christian society. In the traditional order, the Jews had a role and a place assigned to them by theology: even though they had rejected and killed Jesus Christ, they had to be physically preserved and tolerated as witnesses to the Christian faith. However, because of their sins, they had to be isolated and kept in a servile, degraded and despised condition. The only way for them to escape from such condition was conversion. But the French revolution, irrespective of theological rules, emancipated the Jews and turned them from pariah to citizens. The struggle of the Church against political and cultural modernity implied a relentless effort to re-ghettoize the Jews, "to put them back in their place". The traditional anti-Judaism of the Church evolved to a new form of antisemitism which charged the Jewish people with promoting those elements of modernity that were seen to be harmful to the catholic faith and the Christian society. Liberalism, bolshevism, atheism, rationalism, materialism, were all, at one point or another, ascribed to a Jewish conspiracy, often referred to as Freemasonry.
In this paper the Author presents the beginning of a research devoted to the activity of Jewish deputies and senators in Italy (1848-2000). Other works in this direction have examined the presence of ...Evangelic deputies in Italy and, more generally, of religious minorities in the Parliaments of European Countries (France, England, Austria, Germany). This work tries to shed some light on the presence of Jews in the institutions (specifically the Parliament) and hope to add some unknown elements to the history of Jewish emancipation and integration in united Italy. This is, by the way, a topical subject nowadays, when also in Italy the discussion about the widening of the rights of citizenship to new immigrants is very heated. After a general discussion about the question of the legitimacy of dedicating a research on "as Jews", the paper presents a first unfinished, but useful, list of Jews who were deputies and senators.
On the basis of official reports, diaries and other documents the article offers a new interpretation of Mussolini's position towards the « Jewish question » and the Nazi policy against the Jews at ...the beginning of the Thirties. In the first months of 1933 Mussolini considered that the public and violent persecution of the Jews in Germany had a negative effect on international opinion (he was planning the Four Powers Pact, i.e. the political agreement between Italy, Germany, France and U.K.). So he advised Hitler to stop the violence against the Jews. At the same time he intervened to defend Nazi Germany from foreign attacks. However, Mussolini had anti-Semitic intentions too; he suggested a different way to hit the Jews, effective but concealed and more « political », eliminating them from « positions of responsibility ». As far as Italy was concerned, he personally fired some Jews who held public offices: an important banker, a dean, two of his personal collaborators. The consequence of this policy was that someone in the fascist élite began to discuss the method by which in the future the Jews could be eliminated by other « positions of responsibility ».
L'ITALIA CATTOLICA E IL FASCISMO Miccoli, Giovanni
La Rassegna mensile di Israel,
01/2003, Letnik:
69, Številka:
1
Magazine Article
The essay reviews the relationships with Fascism of the Catholic Church and Italian Catholics, in the context of their prevailing attitudes of rejection of bourgeois revolutions and the modern ...liberties which originated from those. From this viewpoint the rise to power of the Fascists who were enemies of those same liberties and their offers of collaboration to the Church prompted the Church to view this development as a first step in reverting to a situation which would bestow to the Church the function of supreme regulator of the life of the nation which the revolutions had taken away from her. The "conciliation" of 1929 and the pact whit the State that followed were a major stepping stone in the process. There were clashes and frictions between the Church and the regime chiefly for its totalitarian predominance in the education of the youth. Yet these clashes, which were the result of two opposing claims to social hegemony, did not jeopardise compromises and agreements which led to a closely integrated action between the regime and some catholic groups. The fissures in this collaboration, caused by the alliance of Fascism with the Third Reich, which emerged towards the end of the term of Pius XI, were mended by his successor Pius XII. Only with the catastrophe of the war the Church gradually distanced itself from the regime.
