Historical
Background
There have been Jewish
settlements in Italy since Roman times. Jewish historian Josephus records
that, in 4 B.C.E., there were nearly 8,000 Jews living along the banks
of the Tiber River, in a community named Ostia Antica, just a few miles
south of present-day Rome. Historical references verify other Jewish settlements
in Italy during the past 2,000 years and reflect both good times and bad
for their inhabitants.
In the period following
the Spanish Inquisition, during the late 15th century, the hostility of
the Catholic Church in Italy led to the expulsion of Jews living in the
southern part of the country. Although expulsion was not forced upon Jews
living in Rome and Venice at that time, the first ghettos that appeared
in these cities in the 1500s clearly evidenced the tenuous state of the
security of Jews in the country.
Until the late
1800s, Italy was not a unitary nation but a collection of smaller states.
During the earlier years of that century, the first clear indication of
acceptance extended to Jews by the Royal House of Savoy, based in the
Piedmont area of northern Italy, resulted in the rapid introduction of
Jewish participation in many aspects of its society. The influence of
the Napoleonic era brought a sense of social enlightenment and pressures
for greater equality in Italian society overall, which set in motion a
series of regional conflicts with the feudal system and the underlying
conservative influence of the Catholic Church. It was largely through
the leadership of the Royal House of Savoy that the 10 years of revolution
against feudalism, beginning in 1860—a period referred to as the
Risorgimento—finally brought unification to Italy.
The flowering of
Jewish participation in all aspects of Italian social, political, economic,
and cultural life that followed unification was nourished by the philosemitic
orientation of the Royal House of Savoy. Acceptance of Jews into their
community gradually extended across the Piedmont and resulted in the demise
of all the ghettos, the last of which, in Rome, was abolished in 1870.
Finally able to
fully participate in Italian society, the older traditions of Jewish cultural
and religious life, which had been its own unifying force, began to fall
away. By the time of Mussolini's march on Rome, in 1922, assimilation
had influenced the lives of most Italian Jewish citizens. For example,
250 Jews, all members of the Italian fascist party, marched proudly with
Mussolini when he took power as dictator of the country. Sixteen years
later, in 1938, at the time of Mussolini's first anti-Jewish measures,
more than 5,000 Jews, or approximately 15 percent of the total Jewish
adult population, were members of the fascist party. It was clear, however,
that, for most Italians, the presence of 47,000 Jews in their country,
who represented no more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total Italian
population of close to 50 million, was of little significance. In fact,
most of the Jews of Italy were essentially assimilated. They spoke Italian
and looked and acted in public as their non-Jewish neighbors. Indeed,
there was no "Jewish problem" nor evidence of overt anti-Semitism
within the population at large. Italy's Jews were Italians.
Hitler's rise to
power in Germany, and Mussolini's efforts to establish a military alliance
with him, formalized in 1940, profoundly affected the fate of Italy's
Jewish community. The Italian racial laws of 1940 (succeeding and intensifying
those of 1938) resulted in the identification by the Italian police of
44,500 Italian Jewish citizens and in their official stigmatization. Rich
and poor, adults and children, those who assimilated, and those still
clinging to their Jewish traditions, all found their lives jeopardized
by Italian law.
Italy entered World
War II in 1940 allied with Hitler and his Nazi German policies. After
nearly three years of war, in which its military forces proved unequal
to those of its enemies, Italy surrendered to the Allies on September
6, 1943. While few Italian Jews were killed by Italian fascists prior
to this surrender, many were interned in concentration camps in Italy
and others fled the country, seeking refuge wherever they could find it.
However, most Italian
Jews waited, unable to work and unable to live normal lives, trying to
avoid exposure and capture as best they could. This changed for the worse
after Italy's surrender, when German forces quickly occupied that part
of northern Italy that had not as yet been liberated by the Allies. The
Holocaust descended upon Italian Jews on October 16, 1943. The first German
military raid on Rome's Jewish ghetto area resulted in the capture of
over 1,200 men, women, and children, who were imprisoned and subsequently
transported to their deaths.
The full five years
of war resulted in the deaths of 7,682 Italian Jews, most perishing in
Nazi concentration camps located in Poland and Germany. Although it is
acknowledged that very few of these victims would have been captured by
the Nazis without some form of Italian collaboration, it is also true
that most of the remaining Italian Jews not captured by the Germans were
aided by other Italians and successfully evaded the Nazis and their Italian
fascist partners.
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