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Americordo. The Italian Jewish Exiles in the Americas

In the annals of the Jewish and Italian communities in America there is little mention, if any, of Italian Jews. Indeed, with hardly any major figures in the 19th century and fewer than two thousand individuals forced to emigrate in 1938 by the Fascist racial laws, the arrival of Italian Jews in the Americas is not a phenomenon that easily allows a general study. Since the 1990s, however, many memoirs have been published, and a story that does not quite fit categorization has begun to emerge.

Through the collection and publishing of interviews and documents, Americordo will offer access to the stories of this diverse group of expatriates, who embraced all fields of knowledge and expressed in many ways their love of Italy and ties to their new homeland, yet always eluded ethnic identification.

Jews who were forced to this country by the Fascist persecutions continued their work in fields ranging from mathematics and biology, Tullia e Bruno Zevi, Giorgio Cavaglieri, Amalia Rosselli, Silvano Arieti, Emilio Segré, Franco Modigliani, Paolo Milano, and Giorgio Levi della Vida are only a few of this group whose impact on society and people goes well beyond the four Nobel prizes they collected in the years after World War II. Not always coalescing as a community, Italian Jews nevertheless continue to share the humanistic heritage of their country of origin, and to participate in societal values and ideas that go beyond ethnic and religious particularism.

Essays

Memoirs

Bibliography

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Harvey Sachs, Music in Fascist Italy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987).

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Michele Sarfatti, Mussolini contro gli ebrei. Cronaca dell’elaborazione delle leggi del 1938 (Torino: Zamorani, 1994).

Michele Sarfatti, The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy, From Equality to Persecution, Translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 2006).

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Guri Schwarz, After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-Fascist Italy, translated by Giovanni Noor Mazhar (Portland: Valentine Mitchell, 2012).

Gianni Scipioni Rossi, La destra e gli ebrei (Catanzaro: Rubbettino Editore, 2003).

Gabriele Turi, Lo Stato Educatore. Politica e intellettuali nell’Italia fascista (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2002).

Angelo Ventura, “La persecuzione fascista contro gli ebrei nell’Università italiana,” in Rivista storica italiana, 109, n. 1, 1997.

Klaus Voigt, Il rifugio precario. Gli esuli in Italia dal 1933 al 1945 (Scandicci: La Nuova Italia, 1993–1996) (ed. or.: Zu aucht auf Widerruf. Exil in Italien 1933–1945. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989–1993).

Tullia Zevi, “L’emigrazione razziale,” in Antonio Varsori, L’antifascismo italiano negli Stati Uniti durante la Seconda guerra mondiale (Roma: Archivio Trimestrale, 1984).

James A. Arieti, Memories of the son of a psychiatrist, «Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis», n. 4, 1999, pp. 541–550. Lino

Belleggia, Lettore di professione fra Italia e Stati Uniti: Saggio su Paolo Milano (Roma: Bulzoni, 2000).

Fabio Benzi (ed.), Corrado Cagli e il suo magistero: mezzo secolo di arte italiana dalla Scuola romana all’astrattismo (Milano: Skira, 2010).

R. Stephen Berry, Mitio Inokuti, A. R. P. Rau, Ugo Fano 1912–2001, A Biographical Memoir, Washington, DC, National Academy of Sciences, 2009.

Giulio L. Cantoni, From Milano to New York by way of hell (San Josè: Writers Club Press, 2000).

Antonio Cassarà, “Il maestro Vittorio Rieti amato negli USA e sconosciuto in Italia. Il racconto di una vita da ebreo perseguitato in una lunga intervista,” in Patria indipendente, 20 giugno 2010, pp. 40–43.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Una vita di musica (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2005). Annie Cohen-Solal, Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).

David Y. Cooper, “Luria, Salvador Edward,” in American National Biography (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Richard N. Gardner, Mission: Italy (Milano: Mondadori, 2004).

Claudio Gerbi, Out of the Past. A Story of the Gerbi Family, copyright 1987 (unpublished), CPLNY.

Ugo Fano, “The Memories of an Atomic Physicist for my Children and Grandchildren,” in Physics Essays, vol. 13, n. 2, June 2000, pp. 176–197.

Laura Capon Fermi, Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).

Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants. The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930–41 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) Olivia Fermi, Laura Fermi’s life, in The Fermi Effect. A living legacy project, www.fermieffect.com

J. David Jackson, Emilio Gino Segrè 1905–1989: A Biographical Memoir (Washington, D.C.: The National Academy Press, 2002).

Alan Jones, Leo Castelli: l’italiano ch inventò l’arte in America (Roma: Castelvecchi, 2007).

Suzannah Lessard, “A Kind of Dancer” in The New Yorker, Jan. 9, 1989. Giorgio Levi Della Vida, Arabi ed ebrei nella storia (Napoli: Guida Editori, 1984).

Giorgio Levi Della Vida, Fantasmi Ritrovati (Napoli: Liguori Editore, 2004).

Salvador E. Luria, A Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). 324

Franco Milano, Memories, 2002 (unpublished), CPLNY.

Paolo Milano, Note a margine a una vita assente (Milano: Adelphi, 1991). Franco Modigliani, Adventures of an Economist (New York-London: Texere, 2001).

Rita Levi Montalcini, In Praise of Imperfection (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

Gualtiero Morpurgo, Il Violino Rifugiato (Milano: Mursia, 2006).

Carla Pekelis, My Version of the Facts, translated by George Hoch eld (Chicago: Marlboro Press, 2005).

Franco Carlo Ricci, Vittorio Rieti (Napoli-Roma: Edizioni Scienti che Italiane, 1987).

Bruno Rossi, Moments in the Life of a Scientist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Nick Rossi, “A tale of two countries. The operas of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco,” in Opera Quarterly, vol. VII, 1990, pp. 89–122.

Harvey Sachs (curator), Arturo Toscanini, dal 1915 al 1946. L’arte all’ombra della politica: omaggio al maestro a 30 anni dalla scomparsa,

Exhibition catalogue (Torino: Ed. Musica, 1987). Harvey Sachs, ed., The letters of Arturo Toscanini (London: Faber and  Faber, 2002).

Gaetano Salvemini, Ricordi di un Fuoriuscito (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1960).

Emilio Segrè, A Mind Always in Motion: The Autobiography of Emilio  Segre (Oakland: University of California Press, 1993).

Alexander Stille, The Force of Things: A Marriage in War and Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).

Peter G. Treves, La ne di un’era (New York: Treves Publishing Company, 1992).

Andrew J. Viterbi, Reflections of an Educator, Researcher and Entrepreneur, CPL Editions 2016

Tullia Zevi-Nathania Zevi, Ti racconto la mia storia (Milano: Rizzoli, 2007).

Patrizia Audenino, Il prezzo della libertà: Gaetano Salvemini in esilio (1925–1949) (Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2009).

Peter Bacon Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).

Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013).

Philip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy: Italian-Americans and Fascism, 1921–1929 (New York: Bordighera Press, 1999).

Renato Camurri, “Idee in movimento. L’esilio degli intellettuali italiani negli Stati Uniti (1930–1945),” in Memoria e Ricerca, n. 31, May– August 2009.

Renato Camurri, Un intellettuale cosmpolita. Introduzione a Franco Modigliani, L’Italia vista dall’America: Battaglie e ri essioni di un esule (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2010).

Renato Camurri, “A forgotten generation: Italian cultural migration to the Americas (1930–45),” in Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol. 15, N. 5, 2010.

Renato Camurri, “Max Ascoli and Italian intellectuals in exile in the United States before the second World War,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol. 15 N. 5, 2010.

Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Giuliana Gemelli (ed.), «The Unacceptables»: American Foundations and Refugee Scholars Between the Two World Wars and After (Bruxelles: P. Lang, 2000).

Sandro Gerbi, “La sezione italiana della Voce dell’America, 1942–1945,” Belfagor, LXVI, n.1, Janurat 31, 2011.

Ellen Ginzburg Migliorino, “Italian Jews in the United States in the Early 40s: Impressions and Lifestyle Changes” (pp. 267–275) in America and the Mediterranean, edited by M. Bacigalupo and P. Castagneto AISNA, Genova, 2001.

Ellen Ginzburg Migliorino, Dopo le leggi razziali. Gli ebrei italiani in America: prime impressioni (University of Trieste: Sissco conference, Lecco, September 27, 2003).

Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970).

Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants. The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930–1941 (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1968).

Domenico Fracchiolla, Un ambasciatore della Nuova Italia a Washington, Alberto Tarchiani e le relazioni tra l’Italia e gli Stati Uniti 1945–1947 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2012).

Daniela Gagliani, Il difficile rientro. Il ritorno dei docenti ebrei nell’Università del dopoguerra (Bologna: CLUEB, 2004).

Davide Grippa, Un antifascista tra Italia e Stati Uniti: democrazia e identità nazionale nel pensiero di Max Ascoli (1898–1947) (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2009).

Leslie Grove, How it can be told. The story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962).

Charles Killinger, Fighting Fascism from the Valley: Italian Intellectuals in the United States, in Peter I. Rose (ed.), The Dispossessed: Anatomy of Exile (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).

Stefano Luconi, La “diplomazia parallela.” Il regime fascista e la mobilitazione politica degli italo-americani (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2000).

Stefano Luconi and Guido Tintori, L’ombra lunga del fascio. Canali di propaganda fascista per gli “italiani d’America(Milano: M&B Publishing, 2004).

Stefano Luconi, “Generoso Pope and Italian-American Voters in New York City,” Studi Emigrazione, 38, June 2001.

Stefano Luconi, “The Voice of the Motherland: Pro-Fascist Broadcasts for the Italian-American Communities in the United States,” Journal of Radio Studies, 8, Summer 2001.

Stefano Luconi, “Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish-Italian Relations in the United States,” American Jewish Archives Journal, 56, 2004.

Lamberto Mercuri, Mazzini news. Organo della «Mazzini society» (1941–42) (Foggia: Bastogi Editrice Italiana, 1990).

Egidio Ortona, Anni d’America. La ricostruzione 1944–1951 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984).

Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews were expendable (Urbana: Chicago University of Illinois Press, 1983).

Matteo Pretelli, “Fascismo e Giovani Italiani all’estero” in Patrizia Dogliani (ed.), Giovani e generazioni nel mondo contemporaneo (Bologna: CLUEB 2009).

Matteo Pretelli, “Tra estremismo e moderazione. Il ruolo dei circoli fascisti italo-americaninella politica estera italiana degli anni Trenta” in Studi Emigrazione, XXXX, n. 150, 2003.

Matteo Pretelli, “Culture or Propaganda? Fascism and Italian Culture in the United States” in Studi Emigrazione, XLIII, n. 161, 2006.

Giuseppe Prezzolini, America in pantofole (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1950).

Bruce Cameron Reed, The History and Science of the Manhattan Project (New York: Springer, 2013).

Gaetano Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities in the United States, 1940. Republished in Center for Migration Studies Special Issues, Vol. 3 N. 3, 1977 and available through the Wiley Online Library.

Holly Cowan Shulman, The Voice of America: Propaganda and Democracy, 1941–1945 (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1990).

Alberto Tarchiani, Dieci anni tra Roma e Washington (Milano: Mondadori, 1955).

Maddalena Tirabassi-Patrizia Audenino, Migrazioni italiane. Storia e storie dall’Ancien Régime a oggi (Milano: Mondadori, 2008).

Maddalena Tirabassi, “Nazioni Unite (1942–1946): l’organo ufficiale della Mazzini Society” in L’antifascismo italiano negli Stati Uniti durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, Rome, Archivio trimestrale, 1984.

Maddalena Tirabassi, “La Mazzini Society (1940–46): un’associazione di antifascisti italiani negli Stati Uniti” in Giorgio Spini, Gian Giacomo Migone, Massimo Teodori, Italia e America dalla Grande Guerra ad Oggi (Venezia: Marsilio, 1976).

Maddalena Tirabassi, “Enemy Aliens or Loyal Americans? The Mazzini Society and the Italian-American Communities” in Rivista di Studi Anglo-Americani, 4–5, 1984–85.

Mario Toscano, L’emigrazione ebraica italiana dopo il 1938, ora in Mario Toscano, Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2003).

Rosario J. Tosiello, “Max Ascoli. A Lifetime of Rockefeller Connections” in Giuliana Gemelli (ed.), The Unacceptables. American Foundations and Refugee Scholars between the Two World Wars and After (Bruxelles: P. Lang, 2000).

Antonio Varsori, Antifascismo negli Stati Uniti e comunità Italo-Americana (Firenze: Sansoni, 1982).

Antonio Varsori, Gli alleati e l’emigrazione democratica antifascista 1940–1943 (Firenze: Sansoni, 1982)

Antonio Varsori, “La Mazzini Society” in Nuova Antologia, CXV, n. 2136, 1980.

Alan L. Heil Jr., Alan Heil, Voice of America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of propaganda: The of ce of war information, 1942–1945 (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 1978).

David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938–1941, Rev. ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985)

Francesco Cassata, Building the New Man: Eugenics, Racial Science and Genetics in Twentieth-century Italy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011).

Helmut Goetz, Il giuramento rifiutato: I docenti universitari e il regime fascista, trans. Loredana Melissari (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 2000).

Giorgio Israel; Pietro Nastasi, Scienza e razza nell’Italia fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998).

Giorgio Israel, Il fascismo e la razza. La scienza italiana e le politiche razziali del regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010).

Roberto Maiocchi, Gli scienziati del duce : il ruolo dei ricercatori e del CNR nella politica autarchica del fascism (Rome: Carocci, 2004).

Pietro Nastasi, Angelo Guerreggio, Matematica in camicia nera: il regime e gli scienziati (Milano: Mondadori, 2005).

Judith R. Goodstein, The Volterra Chronicles: The Life and Times of an Extraordinary Mathematician, 1860–1940 (Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 2007).

Angelo Guerraggio and Giovanni Paoloni, Vito Volterra, trans. Kim Williams (Heidelberg-New York: Springer, 2012).

Valeria Galimi, Giovanna Procacci (eds.), Per la difesa della razza: l’applicazione delle leggi antiebraiche nelle università italiane (Milano: Unicopli: 2009).

Gabriele Turi, Lo Stato educatore. Politica e intellettuali nell’Italia fascista (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2002).

Patrizia Guarnieri, Senza cattedra: L’Istituto di Psicologia dell’Università di Firenze tra idealismo e fascismo (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2012).

Raffaella Simili, Sotto falso nome: Scienziate italiane ebree (1938–1945) (Bologna: Pendragon, 2010).

Angelo Ventura (ed.), L’Università dalle leggi razziali alla Resistenza (Padoa: Padova University Press, 1996).

Interviews by Gianna Pontecorboli. These interviews were conducted by Gianna Pontecorboli for her book Americordo, The Italian Jewish Exiles in America, published in English by CPL Editions in 2015.

Ada Siegal, March 2008, New York

Alberta Eisenmann, April 2009, New York

Andrew Viterbi, September 2009 New York,

Anna Funaro,  w/d

Silvana Sonnino, January 2008, Larchmont, NY

Bruno Pavia, August 2010, Milan

Clotilde Treves, May 2008, New York

Enzo Falco, October 2008, Boston

Eugenio Calabi, June 2008, Philadelphia

Fratelli Leoni, October 2008, Miami

Gigliola Colombo Lopez, August 2010, Milan

Giorgio Pavia, May 2010, New York

Giuliana Segrè Calabi, June 2008, Philadelphia

Giulio Bemporad, May 2008, Long Island, NY

Guido Calabresi, March 2009, New Haven, CT

Lina Vitale, May 2007, New York

Sheldon Satlin, October 2012, New York

Lloyd Levi, September 2007, New York

Magda Marchfeld, October, 2007 Nyack, NY

Marina Stern, May 2009, New York

Mirella Bedarida, September 2009, New York

Nora Lombroso Rossi, October 2008, New York

Robert Fano, October 2008, Boston

Tullia Zevi, October 2009, Rome

Willy Barta, October 2008, Miami

Memoirs

Giorgio Cavalieri, Memories of life in the twentieth century. Emigration and World War II, typewritten documents donated by the author to CPL in 1999

Claudio Gerbi, M. D., Out of the past. A story of the Gerbi Family, unpublished.

Andrea Lager, Memoir, Typewritten documents donated by the author to CPL

Cathy Lager Bottone, In the Corner of the Carnaro… We were too few to make historyTypewritten documents donated by the author to CPL and reviewed by her son

Peter G. Treves, This I remember, The War Years”, 1939-1946, Vol. II, Palm Beach, New York 1988-1989, unpublished.

Vera De Benedetti Bonnet, The summer House, unpublished.

Ellen Ginzburg Migliorno, Dopo le leggi razziali. Gli ebrei italiani in America: prime impressioni, Università di Trieste, unpublished.

Essential history

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1938-1939

September 7, 1938

LRazzaCorriere

On September 7, 1938, the Fascist Regime promulgated the Racial Laws, stripping Italian Jews of their civil rights and their livelihood. Foreign Jews were expelled and given six months to leave the country. Those who had acquired Italian citizenship after 1919, were stripped of it. A report of the American Joint Distribution Committee of November 1938 describes the situation: “The economic situation of the Jews in Italy is becoming more and more precarious. […] The anti-Jewish provisions prohibit Italian Jews from having any part in industrial enterprises, […] In fact, these enterprises are being expropriated at a price set by government experts in return for governments bonds, which are not redeemable.  In a number of cities Jews are compelled to move their shops […], opening new businesses is prohibited […], thousands of Jewish employees have lost their employment, […] all Jewish army and navy officers are dismissed […], some of them have reacted by committing suicide. […] Having their property confiscated, Jews are left with no choice other than to emigrate […] According to the latest figures, 3,700 Jews were baptized during the last 6 months  […].”

September 1938- March 12, 1939

MarioCastelnuovoTedesco

The promulgation of the Racial Laws removed from their jobs hundreds of academics, including full professors as well as adjuncts and researchers. All Jews who held public office lost their positions. Jewish businesses were expropriated, beginning with larger establishments and progressively targeting smaller assets. In the following years, under the Kingdom of Italy first and, after September 8, 1943 under the Italian Social Republic, the laws were expanded and became harsher, culminating in the general order of arrest of November 30, 1943 and the liquidation of all Jewish personal property. Under this conditions two groups of Jews were immediately faced with no alternative but leaving the country: those who the Regime had labeled as “foreign Jews” and the Italian Jews who had lost their positions and were able to obtain visas and jobs abroad. Roughly 16,000 Jews left Italy by the end of March of 1939. While foreign Jews were for the most part supported by the Joint Distribution Committee and other relief agencies, Italian Jews were only able to depart counting on their own resources. It is estimated that roughly 7,000 Italian Jews fled, mostly the the US, Brasil and Argentina, and fewer to Columbia, Perù, Chile, Palestine and North Africa.

Reactions

PapaThe Racial Laws provoke neither popular reaction nor institutional opposition. In fact State agencies complied with their implementation in a very thorough manner. Episodes of solidarity were limited to individual cases, mostly among friends and colleagues as well as among family members who were not Jewish. The Italian population generally embraced the sudden rejection of their fellow citizens of Jewish religion. Thousands of Jewish students were expelled from school from one day to teh other and became invisible to their former classmates and teachers. List of Jewish academics, public officers and business owners were diligently compiled by their colleagues. Properties and assets were put on the market below price. The need to liquidate assets, obtain travel documents and visas, sell stocks that had been frozen, generated a whole new market. The Catholic Church fully accepted the Laws inasmuch they re-instated the regime of segregation of the Jews the Church had maintained for four centuries prior to the unification.  The only objection raised by the Vatican concerned children of mixed marriages, whom – based on the Lateran Pacts – were Catholic and therefore fell under its own jurisdiction.

A handful of public figures spoke out in protest of the Laws, but to no avail.

Benedetto Croce, Enrico Fermi and Arturo Toscanini

Dissenting voices were few and mostly without consequences. In August 1938, philosopher and liberal senator Benedetto Croce joined a Swedish appeal in favor of FermiCaponEnrico Fermi, whose wife, Laura Capon and children were Jewish. Fermi gave some international resonance to the situation in Italy by fleeing the country with his family after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1938, a few days after after Kristallnacht. The Fermis settled in the United States were he had obtained a position.

Internationally renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini criticized Fascist anti-Semitism branding it as “medieval stuff”. Mussolini ordered the withdrawal of his passports, which was eventually returned to avoid a scandal as the conductor was scheduled to play in New York in that season. He nonetheless left Italy for the United States in 1938, shaming the regime.

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