Italian Racial Laws

My contribution focuses on the archival resources and special collections available in music libraries and archives (in and outside Italy), which are of interest for the study of Fascist persecution against Jewish musicians, composers, singers, and music critics, both Italian and foreigners.

Trascorsi ottant’anni dalla promulgazioni delle leggi razziali antiebraiche, il volume ripercorre il dibattito storiografico italiano a partire dal primo studio sull’argomento realizzato da Renzo De Felice nel 1961. Nel saggio introduttivo vengono contestualizzati i temi che hanno caratterizzato la discussione sul rapporto fascismo-antisemitismo-razzismo, evidenziando gli snodi e i momenti nei quali la ricerca ha approfondito le conoscenze su una materia che in Italia rischia ormai di essere banalizzata e mal gestita dai media. All’interno di una produzione scientifica e divulgativa divenuta ormai molto consistente, questa antologia riporta l’attenzione su quei contributi che per primi hanno indagato aspetti generali e specifici della legislazione antiebraica in Italia, la genesi del razzismo fascista, il ruolo della Chiesa, le responsabilità degli intellettuali, la spoliazione dei beni e l’incerta politica risarcitoria dello Stato italiano dal dopoguerra

At the turn of 1938/1939 the Italian Jewish archaeologist Doro Levi (1898-1991) left Italy and landed in the United States after the Fascist regime deprived him of his job and his career. Only in recent years has been revealed the importance of the role played by “the spy” Royall Tyler and “the [former] ambassador” Robert Woods Bliss, best known as co-founder of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington, DC). The aim of this paper is to sort the phases of the escape of the scholar, mainly linking the Bliss-Tyler correspondence managed by J.N. Carder (archivist at Dumbarton Oaks) with what was meanwhile taking place in Italy: facts, laws and administrative measures.

Quaderni di Storia, 94/2021:
https://www.edizionidedalo.it/quaderni-di-storia/quaderni-di-storia-94-2021.html

Il saggio si inserisce nel volume frutto dell'iniziativa congiunta del Consiglio superiore della magistratura e del Consiglio nazionale forense, con la partecipazione del Senato della Repubblica, l’Unione delle Comunità ebraiche  e la Corte di cassazione, in occasione dell'80° anniversario dall’emanazione delle leggi antiebraiche.
Il testo approfondisce ciò che condusse all'espulsione di centinaia di professionisti forensi  dalla propria dimensione lavorativa e quindi sociale. Si analizza, anche grazie a fonti archivistiche, la vicenda interna ed esterna agli organi professionali degli avvocati dell'epoca che, senza scrupoli, parteciparono convintamente all'attuazione delle leggi antiebraiche.

Il testo ricostruisce, attraverso i documenti custoditi nel'archivio storico del Senato, l'applicazione delle leggi razziali ai nove senatori di origine ebraica allora in carica.  nove senatori di origine ebraica: Salvatore Barzilai, Enrico Catellani, Adriano Diena, Isaia Levi, Achille Loria, Teodoro Mayer, Elio Morpurgo, Salvatore Segrè Sartorio e Vito Volterra.

Maria è una donna diffidente verso convenzioni e istituzioni, tesa verso i
rapporti definiti autentici, ma che non rinuncia a coltivare la sua idea di
amore, per lei unico e sincero. Scontrandosi con una realtà fatta di eventi
tragici e rapporti umani velati di ipocrisia, la giovane protagonista si rifugia
sempre più in un ideale in cui vuole avere fede. Un ideale che rientra per 
nell’immaginario in cui la donna è figura umile, docile e sottomessa. L’unica
via di fuga che le è concessa è quella che si trova nei sogni. Erika Silvestri,
scrittrice e storica, ha curato la prefazione del volume, conducendo un lavoro di ricerca su Pia Rimini: fino all’anno scorso, infatti, si presumeva che l’autrice triestina fosse morta sul treno diretto ad Auschwitz. L’autrice arrivò  invece al campo di concentramento, e la ricerca della dott.ssa Silvestri si sta attualmente concentrando su ciò che potrebbe esserle accaduto da quel momento in poi. La prefazione contiene un documento inedito.

Il seguente articolo intende tracciare un breve profilo bio-bibliografico dello storico galiziano Isaiah Sonne (1887-1960) e dei suoi due figli, Sulamith Sonne Weissbarth (1915-1996) e Daniel Shimshi (1928-1984), residenti a Firenze negli anni Trenta. All’emanazione delle leggi razziali nel 1938, Sonne si ricongiunse al figlio, già a Gerusalemme, mentre Sulamith rimase in Italia per completare gli studi in Chimica, per poi fuggire in Francia e fare ritorno in Italia al fianco dei primi gruppi partigiani. Seppur i percorsi e gli interessi di Sonne e i suoi figli furono assai diversi, le esistenze di tutti e tre furono caratterizzate da due costanti: l’emigrazione e la ricerca scientifica.

In this article deals I examine two main topics: the racial laws’ short-term consequences on the daily life of the ca. 45,000 Italian Jews, and the long-term consequences with particular attention to the return of Italian Jews to life in post-war Italy.
I first documentI the historical, cultural, political and religious context that produced a discriminatory legislation the late 1930s in Italy.
I then study the development of the Fascist racial laws (1938) and their impact on the lives of the persecuted who were almost suddenly denied the political, civil and social rights acquired with the unification of Italy. The moment following the outbreak of the Second World War until the liberation of the nation shows the radicalization of the anti-Semitic measures of the previous years leading to the internment and death camps of thousands of Jews.
I end by looking at the long-term consequences of the persecutory period in post-World War II Italy and at the origin of the so-called “myth of the good Italian” which arose soon after the end of the war. This stereotype was challenged by historiography in the 1980s, but it is still firmly rooted in Italian and international public opinion today.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of the Roman Catholic Church in encouraging popular acceptance of the Italian Fascist regime’s antisemitic campaign and its “racial laws” (effective from 1938 to 1943). Investigation of major Italian Catholic daily newspapers, the Fascist press, and Italian and French diplomatic archives reveals how the Church communicated its support for these racial laws by distinguishing unacceptable German racism from Church-sanctioned anti-Jewish measures.

At the end of Word War II, the post-fascist Italian establishment had to deal with most of the abuses perpetrated by the previous regime. Movable and immovable property belonging to citizen from «enemy nations» were then returned.
The analysis of the Tuscan Case is carried out on the basis of the documents conserved at the Historical Archive of Monte Dei Paschi di Siena. The aim of the analysis itself is both to highlight the complexity and slowness of the return of goods mechanism, and to underline the substantial continuity with the past: as a matter of fact, was the same Ente di gestione e liquidazione immobiliare (Egeli) to confiscate the properties before and during the War, and to return them at the end of the conflict. Very frequently the restoration of full rights on personal belongings, turned into a long and exhausting process for the owners
themselves. As a result, the return procedure often became quite armful, carrying out further abuses instead of healing them.

In September 1943 Trieste became a province of the German Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral. By the High Commissioner Friedrich Rainer’s orders, furniture was confiscated, and art collections and libraries were dismantled. In the autumn 1943, and in 1944, the Germans even confiscated Arnoldo Frigessi di Rattalma’s property,  notwithstanding he had been declared as “not belonging to the Jewish race”, thanks to his “fascist credits”. Arnoldo Frigessi represents an interesting case of the Fascist Jews’ situation. After the war,  he was arrested by the Allies, and imprisoned for some months in an Allied concentration camp.

The implementation of the "Racial Laws" in 1938 severely affected Italian school and university. The expulsion of Jewish professors represented a long term loss for Italian academic world, also because many of them had to leave Italy to continue their work and some never came back. Giuseppe Levi, well known anatomist and professor at the university of Turin, was expelled together with some of his assistants, like Rita Levi Montalcini, later awarded with the Nobel Prize. Levi's experience after 1938 is extremely telling and shows how hard it was for those who were expelled to find a way out from Italy, to get a job abroad and to sort out the needed papers. From the testimonies written by his daughter, Natalia Ginzburg, and his students, from the letters he wrote and received in his correspondence with his son Mario, exile in France, and the archival documents in the Belgian Archives, it is possible to understand how Fascism and the implementation of the racial legislation affected people, as scholars and individuals. Giuseppe Levi, who had always been antifascist, had to make hard decisions to continue his work already in 1931, when he had to take the oath the Fascist government imposed to the professors, and later, in 1939, when he went to the University of Liege, where he was caught by the German invasion. He managed eventually to come back to Italy in 1941, and had to face the risk of being deported after September 8, 1943. At the end of the war he got back his professorship in Turin. The common thread which can be found in Levi's experience, during the seven years he had to stay away from the Italian university, is his strong dedication to research and to teaching at a time when these activities, being subjected to an antisemitic policy. were not considered by the government as priorities for the academic work.

ora anche in F. Lanchester (a cura di), Dallo Stato partito allo Stato dei partiti: e ora?, Milano, Wolters Kluwer-Cedam, 2019 (Atti del Convegno tenuto il giorno 29 novembre 2018 presso la Sala delle Lauree della Facoltà di Scienze politiche, sociologia e comunicazione dell’Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’).

Fascist racial laws have recently been the subject of much debate in Italy, not only among historians but also on the part of institutions and media. However, this has not always been the case in the past. On the contrary, at times the public awareness of what happened in Italy against Jews starting in 1938 was actually quite low or distorted. It can thus be useful to retrace the main steps of the (still ongoing) journey towards public awareness of that crucial moment of Italian history. This can also be done by questioning how such evolution intertwined with television, the new mass-medium that became pivotal precisely during postwar decades. When did Italian State television start discussing racial laws? How was said phenomenon narrated to Italians by RAI’s documentaries? Did the interpretations of those events change through time? What kind of an impact may one presume that said representations had on the public debate and awareness? How did all of this relate with the historical investigations of the topic and with its literary and cinematographic narratives? While touching upon these issues, the seminar will also provide a preview on the ways that are being implemented to present the research findings to a general public, wider than the scholars’ community. By using the new digital media for the construction and the dissemination of a research in public history.
The seminar was delivered in English on May 13, 2020 as part of the series hosted by the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities - Ca' Foscari University of Venice. The seminar is now visible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLkICSIkSWA&t=3s

SOMMARIO: 1. L'operazione taglia-leggi.-2. Il decreto-legge n. 112/2008 e i colombi viaggiatori.-3. Il decreto-legge n. 200/2008 tra discriminazioni razziali ed "assoluto rispetto delle religioni".-4. Il decreto-legge n. 200/2008 e la legislazione "riparatrice".-5. Il codice dell'ordinamento militare (de-creto legislativo 15 marzo 2010, n. 66).-6. La legge n. 1045 del 1939, "le persone di colore" e la se-gregazione razziale.-7. Conclusioni. * Consigliere della Camera dei Deputati. This paper examines how racist legislation and the laws that restored jewish people are be involved by the procedure of reduction of the global amount of statutes achieved in the XVI legislature. It presents the racist laws in this particular perspective, that enables an exploration of well known and less known provisions, between abrogations, rev-iviscence, carelessness.