Jews In Italy Research Articles

Mussolini and the Jewish Question in the Diaries of Claretta Petacci

The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the attitude of the leader of Italian fascism, Benito Mussolini, to representatives of Jewish nationality. The diaries of Mussolini's mistress Claretta Petacci, which she kept from 1932 to 1937, are mainly used as a source. The work also explores the drastic change in B. Mussolini's attitude towards Jews, which occurred after an alliance was concluded with the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, in 1937. There is a connection between these events, since until 1937 Petacci's diaries said nothing about the Jewish question. The article also examines the attitude of Italian society towards the racial laws of 1938 against Jews, which was not at all unambiguous. As an analytical method, the interpretive approach of the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz will be used, who believed that the analysis of culture is not an experimental matter, but a hermeneutic one, engaged in the search for meanings, symbols and ideas. The scientific novelty of this study lies in a specific consideration of the Jewish question of Mussolini and his study based on the memoirs of his mistress Claretta Petacci. There are not many studies devoted specifically to this issue and specifically to this historical source. The main conclusions of the above study are that it was the alliance concluded in 1937 with Adolf Hitler that radically influenced Benito Mussolini's decision to introduce racial laws in Italy, since the Duce was not much concerned about the Jewish question until 1937. The author of the work also drew conclusions regarding the negative attitude towards anti-Semitic laws by the majority of Italian society: Italians did not accept them due to the lack of anti-Semitism and hostility towards Jews in Italy.

Examining discrimination against Jews in Italy with three natural field experiments

We use three natural field experiments to examine anti-Semitism in Italy by sending email inquiries to amateur football clubs, landlords, and employers and comparing the response rates to emails sent with Jewish- and non-Jewish-sounding names. Italy is an interesting country as discrimination was heterogeneous and geographically unevenly distributed during World War II. We analyze if today's anti-Semitism in Italy is geographically correlated to the deportations and killings of Jews during the Holocaust. The results show significant discrimination when looking for football club and an apartment, but not when seeking a job. We find markedly different results for women. Comparing areas with different societal and economic implications provides us with a more informed perspective about the extent of discrimination.

Italian-Jewish Patrons of Modern Art in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy

With a focus on art donations, this article explores several case studies of Jewish Italian patrons such as Sforni, Uzielli, Sarfatti, Castelfranco, Vitali, and others who supported artists of movements that were considered modern at their time: the Macchiaioli (1850-1870), the Futurists (1910s), the Metaphysical painters (1920s), the Novecento group (1920-1930s), and several post WWII cases. It reflects on differences in art donations by Jews in Italy and other European countries, modes of reception, taste, meanings and strategy of donations, thus contributing to the social history of Italian and European Jewry and the history of collections and donations to public museums.

The Italian executioners: revisiting the role of Italians in the Holocaust

ABSTRACTThe article revisits the role of Italians in the Holocaust in the light of recent historiography and by applying the category of genocide to the hunting, arrest and deportations of the Jews in Italy in 1943–45, under the German occupation and during the Republic of Salò established by Mussolini. Special attention is given to the ideological context of radical antisemitism, initiated by the introduction of the fascist racial law of 1938 and exacerbated by the Italian civil war, as well as to the role of a variety of ordinary actors, from policemen to volunteers of the fascist party, from bureaucrats to informants.

L’internement des Juifs en Italie et la géographie des camps (1940-1945)

The internment of the Jews in Italy and the geography of the campsItaly is among the nations that used concentration camps. As early as the 1930s, Italy built camps in Libya where close to 50 thousand civilian internees would go on to die. However, many years went by before historians became aware of this. This could perhaps be explained by the tendency to diminish Fascist crimes when faced with the generally much more horrifying crimes committed by the Nazis. This paper describes the Fascist concentration camp system and the different forms it took, whether in terms of the internees’ living conditions, the different camps’ specificities or the roundup and detention procedures. Civil internment came under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior, which managed a total of 48 camps until 1943. Up until then, Italian internment never exclusively targeted the Jews. Its goal was not extermination and it was not directly linked to the anti-Semitic laws enacted by the regime in 1938. However, beginning on November 30, 1943, the Italian internment under the Italian Social Republic’s collaborationist Fascist regime applied to all of the Jews. The internment used roughly 50 “provincial camps” and became a cog in the Holocaust machinery.

Sguardo di madre – Ordine simbolico, colpa e liberazione in "Una bambina e basta" di Lia Levi

Il libro di Lia Levi preso in esame si presta a essere letto sia come un documento riguardante la persecuzione degli ebrei in Italia, sia come la testimonianza d’una infanzia negata, in cui la giovanissima protagonista è alla ricerca di sé, in un mondo intriso di retorica maschilista. Il contributo analizza innanzitutto il dispositivo colpevolizzante approntato dall’ordine simbolico dell’antisemitismo, e pone in evidenza come il suo meccanismo sia analogo a quello all’opera nell’ideologia del dominio di genere. Desumendo dalla riflessione di Adriano Cavarero la categoria dello 'sguardo', il saggio ne segue lo sviluppo nella storia di Lia Levi, dapprima soffermandosi sul rapporto della bambina con il mondo adulto, quindi sul rapporto senza infingimenti – ma sempre teso tra percezione della colpa e liberazione – con la madre. Si delineano così alcuni luoghi simbolici in cui la bambina ritaglia uno spazio di appartenenza a sé sottratto alla storia, alla violenza voluta dall’uomo. Quel che riesce a far fronte a un mondo orribile, d’altra parte, non è il 'diritto' escogitato dall’ordine simbolico maschile, del padre, ma l’ostinazione dello sguardo materno a cui la bambina è esposta sin dalla nascita, nella sua fragile creaturalità e carnalità. Sono centrali, a questo punto dell’esame del testo di Levi, non solo le riflessioni di Cavarero ispirate da Hannah Arendt, ma anche quelle di Theodor. W. Adorno e Jacques Derrida. Proprio il riconoscimento conferito da uno sguardo femminile che salva dal dominio e dalla violenza è ciò che in conclusione restituisce alla bambina di Lia Levi una vita senza attributi, degna d’essere vissuta per il semplice fatto d’essere stata generata da una madre.

Renaissance in the Graveyard: The Hebrew Tombstones of Padua and Ashkenazic Acculturation in Sixteenth-Century Italy

The acculturation Ashkenazic Jews in Italy is the focus of the present discussion. By 1500 Jews had been living in Padua for centuries, but their cemeteries were destroyed in the 1509. Four cemeteries remained with over 1200 inscriptions between 1530–1860. The literary features of the inscriptions indicate a shift from a preference for epitaphs written in prose, like those of medieval Germany, to epitaphs in the form of Italian Jewry's occasional poetry. The art and architecture of the tombstones are part and parcel of the Renaissance ambient, with the portals and heraldry characteristic of Palladian edifices. The lettering, too, presents a shift from the constituency's medieval Ashkenazic origins to its Italian setting. These developments are situated in the broader context of Italian Jewish art and architecture, while the literary innovations are shown to reflect the revival of the epigram among poets of the Italian Renaissance.

Reconstructing the Early History of Two Kabbalistic Manuscripts from El Escorial Library

This article reconstructs the early stages in the history of two manuscripts from El Escorial Library containing different Jewish treatises on Kabbalah from Late-Medieval Iberian authors. Both manuscripts, copied in Italy by Sephardic scribes, were acquired in the late sixteenth century for the new Royal Library in the Monastery of El Escorial. Codicological and paleographic elements are considered, as well as the transmission of Sephardic Kabbalah, in the light of book history and manuscript production of Sephardic Jews in sixteenth-century Italy. More specifically, the material analysis of the manuscripts will reveal how each one of them came to be a book, exposing diverse processes of production and consumption of handwritten books among Sephardic Jews in Italy.

Between Renaissance and Ghetto. Essays on the History of the Jews in Italy in the 14th and 17th Centuries

Between Renaissance and Ghetto. Essays on the History of the Jews in Italy in the 14th and 17th Centuries

A Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Tale in Hebrew: A Unique Literary Exchange

AbstractA single fragment of a thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of an Arthurian romance is testimony to the familiarity of Jews in Italy with the popular tales of King Arthur. The translator is a learned jew, well-versed in Hebrew, scripture and exegesis, and yet his translation is a classic example of a chivalric romance set in a culture far removed from that of its translator and its possible readers.

The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community (review)

The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community. By Stephanie B. Siegmund. [Stanford Series in Jewish History and Culture.] (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2005. Pp. xxvi, 624. $70.00.) Stephanie Siegmund's book is aU about how to think about the ghetto. TraditionaUy, the ghetto is the arch-symbol of the Jewish policy of militant Counter-Reformation Catholicism. A reinvigorated Church instituted a new and tougher policy on Jews in Italy, who were either expeUed or else stripped of many rights and privileges and confined to ghettoes. Indeed, the physical image of the ghetto, precisely because of its physical-spatial nature, served as the visible representation of the mix of restrictions and disabilities to which Jews were now subject, as weU as a symbol of the fear and loathing in which they were now formaUy and officiaUy held. This notion of the ghetto is a staple of Early-Modern Jewish historiography. It is a model with which Siegmund takes issue. She argues that one cannot speak of an undifferentiated Italian ghetto. WhUe ghettoes were in fact created in almost ali the communities where Jews were permitted to reside, they did not come into being in the same way, and their effects upon the local Jewish communities were not identical. Indeed, in the case of Florence, to which her study is devoted, the creation of the ghetto caused the creation of the Jewish community, both in the sense of bringing together disparate Jews living in Florence who had lived lives basicaliy separate from one another and often from Jewish practice, as weU as in the sense of a formal kehilah, which was formed by the state-ordered concentration of the seven hundred or so Jews living in Tuscany into a ghetto constructed by the state, and by the statesponsored formation of organs of seli-goverment. The Early-Modern kehilah being an organization dedicated, among other things, to promoting and even coercing religious praxis and halakhic conformity, it was a supreme irony that the Medici Christian state was responsible for pushing its Jews to live orthodox Jewish lifestyles. Or perhaps it was not ironic at ali, when one considers, as Siegmund does, the mix of factors that led to the decision of the Tuscan government to expel its relatively smali number of Jews from their places of residence throughout the (soon to be) Grand Duchy and to concentrate them in a ghetto in Florence in 1570-71. Traditional historiography has concerned itseE with the question of why it was that Cosimo I, the famous ruler of Florence who created both the Tuscan state and its feared and efficient administrative machinery, changed his longstanding pragmatic and even benevolent policy toward Jews in Tuscany in the late 1560's, when he began to conform to Papal policy and compelled the Jews to wear a segno (a yellow o on the hat) and move into a ghetto. …

Jews in Italy between Integration and Assimilation, 1861–1938

The history of Italian Jews from 1861 to 1938 is often viewed as the period in which they totally assimilated into the Italian nation. This article, however, argues that rather than their assimilation it was a period of their integration into Italian society. Various approaches to this question are presented, including a review of the literature, with a view to reconsidering the relationship between Jewish culture and Italian culture, or rather non-Jewish culture. Italian Jewish history is shown not to be separated from, but to be “internal” to Italian social, cultural, and political history—part of the dynamic process of change that occurred during this period not only in Italy but throughout Europe.

Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule 1922–1945ZimmermanJ.D. Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule 1922-1945. Cambridge University PressCambridge, 2005, xxii, 374, £25.00ISBN 9780521841016

Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule 1922–1945ZimmermanJ.D. <i>Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule 1922-1945.</i> Cambridge University PressCambridge, 2005, xxii, 374, £25.00ISBN 9780521841016

Joshua D. Zimmerman, editor.Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945.:Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945.

Joshua D. Zimmerman, editor.<i>Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945.</i>:Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945.

Pope Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy: Evidence of a Papal Directive?

Pope Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy: Evidence of a Papal Directive?

Pope Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy: Evidence of a Papal Directive?

Abstract Little evidence supports the notion that Pius XII delivered a directive to members of the Catholic Church to help Jews during the German occupation of Italy, argues the author of this article. That many such men and women did open their doors is well known, and several thousand Jews in Italy were saved as a result. The pope and his advisers knew that many Jews, along with many more non-Jewish fugitives from the Nazis and Fascists, were hiding in religious institutions outside Vatican City, and being sheltered individually in prelates' residences in Vatican City itself. However, they seem not to have been aware of the full extent of the rescue effort, nor to have ordered it initially.

The Jews in Sicily, Volume 2, 1302-1391 (review)

Reviewed by: The Jews in Sicily, Volume 2, 1302–1391 Zev Garber The Jews in Sicily, Volume 2, 1302–1391, by Shlomo Simonsohn. Studia Post-Biblica No. 48.3. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000. Pp. xiv + 599-1251. Np. The volume under review is the sixteenth in the author’s Documentary History of the Jews in Italy, and the second of four volumes on the Jews of Sicily, covering most of the fourteenth century. The first volume covers epigraphic records from 383 to 1300, and the remaining volumes are planned to cover the last century of Jewish presence on [End Page 175] the largest island in the Mediterranean until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Simonsohn, Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, charts known and not so known references and sources from state archives of Barcelona, Trapani, Venice, and particularly Palermo as well as state, local authorities, and notaries. What emerges is an impressive annotated record in Latin on the Jewish economic life in Sicily in the first century of Aragonese rule. The documents suggest that the Jews were well adjusted in Sicilian life. They were indistinguishable from non-Jews in business dealings, and hundreds of notarial deeds suggest equity in taxes, debts, and fines. Records show that Jews were involved in all facets of economic life: blacksmiths, agriculture, merchants, real estate, saddlers, shoemakers, shipping, tanning, trade and business, and the medicinal profession, druggists, doctors, and surgeons. For the most part Jews succeeded economically, but there were special Jew taxes pertaining to Jewish religious rituals or events; e.g., meat tax, wine tax, entertainment tax at rites of passage (birth, wedding), etc. The relationship between the Jews and the Crown and the Church reflect mixed fortune. For example, on 12 March 1321, King Peter II ordered the officials in Marsala to prevent church authorities from exercising jurisdiction over the Jews in Mazara, and nine months later he rescinded his declaration. Also portrayed are examples of Jewish communal self- government and synagogue life. The entries are indexed and organized, and demon strate mastery of the vast documentation involved, with careful attention to primary sources. As mentioned, this volume is part of a work in progress. Consequently, there is no narrative or introductory matter (this is promised in the last volume) to aid in understanding the documents as part of the whole picture. The brief remarks that place each entry in situ help, but they are not sufficient for a generalist. Nonetheless, an important source of sources for researchers of Sicilian Jewry. Zev Garber Jewish Studies Los Angeles Valley College Copyright © 2003 Purdue University

A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (review)

A History of the Popes, 1830-1914. By Owen Chadwick. [The Oxford History of the Christian Church.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. x, 614. $135.00.) Following up his 1981 volume in the same series, Ropes and European Revolution, Professor Chadwick has now given us a history of the four popes from Gregory XVI to X. He devotes one chapter to each of them except IX, to whom he accords five. He emphasizes their relations with the major countries of the Continent but spends little time on Great Britain and Ireland and almost none on the rest of the world, since, as an editor's note states, the history of the Church in the British Isles and in non-European countries, including the Americas, is to be found in other volumes of the series. eight chapters on individual pontiffs contain much material about the Catholics in various countries, especially France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, even in affairs in which the popes did not play a major role, as well as much political history, for example concerning Cavour and Napoleon III. Under the subheading Pius X and France (p. 377) the relations between Catholics and Jews in Italy, Austria, and Poland are traced before the Dreyfus Affair and its aftermath (mainly the separation of Church and State in France) are recounted. These eight chapters the author complements with three on Nationality and Religion in Tyrol and Poland (including Ruthenians), Spain, and Portugal. He then bestows a chapter on The Religious, meaning mostly male orders or congregations. He concludes the book with three briefer chapters on Catholic universities, The Idea of Reunion, and Saints in the Modern World, including Doctors of the Church. Papal promotion of the foreign missions is not considered even though most of the missionaries were Europeans and their headquarters and seminaries were in Europe. Professor Chadwick deftly relates the history of the four conclaves. He is especially adept at painting character sketches or vignettes of well-known persons such as Lamennais, Felix Dupanloup, Louis Veuillot, and Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, and of lesser-known persons such as several Italian bishops, Enrico Campello, Ignacy Holowinski, Umberto Benigni, and Antonio Maria Claret, who appears a second time in the chapter on saints. His treatment of particular topics such as the Syllabus of Errors and the First Vatican Council, though necessarily brief, are excellent. Throughout the book the author skillfully interweaves the secular history with the religious history of the countries he studies. …

Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy

What did Pius XII do to aid Jews during World War II? This meticulously researched and balanced book examines efforts on behalf of Jews in Italy, the country where the pope was in a position to be most helpful. It finds that despite a persistent myth to the contrary, Pius XII and his assistants at the Vatican did very little.

The History of the Jews in Italy. Cecil Roth

Previous articleNext article No AccessRecent BooksThe History of the Jews in Italy. Cecil Roth Morton M. BermanMorton M. Berman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 27, Number 4Oct., 1947 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/483649 Views: 4Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.