The word Holocaust is believed to have been first used in the 20th century to indicate the Armenian genocide and subsequently to indicate the Nazi book burning actions of 1933. In the 1960s by the American Jewish world adopted the term and applied it to the genocide of the Jews. It became popular  through the television series “Holocaust” in 1978 and the creation of the Holocaust Museum in Washington in 1993.

The word means “completely burnt” in Greek and indicates animal sacrifices. It probably originated in the early Greek-speaking Christian world with the meaning of “offering to god”. Because of the implication that the Jews may have been “offered” for a reason, many, including Primo Levi, refused the use of this term.

After the founding of the State of Israel, Yad Vashem introduced the word Shoah, that means catastrophe in Hebrew. Although a biblical term inscribed in the traditional narrative of “destruction and reconstruction”, it is generally regarded as a secular definition of the persecution and extermination project.

The exact figure of Jews killed in the Shoah is unknown. Specialized historical researches have determined the number of victims to be between 5 and 6 million. The main sources for this complex calculation are based on the comparison between pre-war and post-war Jewish population censuses, on numerical reports of murders by “special troops” (Einsatztruppen) and on transport lists from the various countries.

The largest Jewish populations before the outbreak of World War II lived in Eastern Europe, chiefly Poland, Yugoslavia, Lithuania and Ukraine. In these areas, between 70% and 80% of Jews were exterminated. In the Axis countries (Germany and Italy) and Vichy France the percentage of Jews who were deported was between 20% and 30% because a large part of the Jewish population fled before the end of 1941 and because the Axis powers sought to export the killing operation east to occupied countries.

In the short-lived liberal period between the unification of Italy and the rise of the fascist dictatorship, Jews lived in Italy as equal citizens who enjoyed freedom and reached prosperity and prestige. However, over three centuries of Catholic theological anti-Judaism and social segregation, were not wiped off overnight. Italy had been the last stronghold of ghettos and forced conversions. In Rome in particular, Jews were confined to the ghetto until the city’s annexation to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870.

In addition, the Italian society embraced popularized forms of eugenic and racial theories, at that time pervasive in Europe and the US. Their influence increased between the colonial enterprises of the early 20th century and the invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. Beginning in  the 1920s, political and biological anti-Semitism surfaced to various degrees in sectors of the Italian society, press and political life. The career of Giovanni Preziosi, a former priest who debuted as journalist in fascist fringe publications and became Minister of propaganda in the Italian Social Republic is emblematic of this course of events.

The 1929 pact of alliance between the Vatican and the fascist regime, by which Catholicism became the official state religion, represented another set-back from the emancipation period. The pact remapped the legal and civil status of Italian Jews and provided the blueprints of their separation from the Catholic majority.

Although for many years Mussolini proclaimed that racism was not part of the “higher” Italian civilization, under his rule anti-Semitism expanded significantly. The regime’s aim was to establish tight control over the Jewish minority and remove Judaism from Italian society. As shown by historian Michele Sarfatti, Italian state antisemitism developed through three phases: the attack on equality in the late 1920s-early 1930s; the attack on rights with the Racial Laws in 1938 and the attack on lives conducted from September 1943 under the Italian Social Republic.

During the period of the Italian Social Republic, many Jews who were trying to hide received help from civilians, clergy, antifascists and civil servants who, as in other European countries, sometimes risked their lives to extend assistance. At the same time, the Italian police were releasing census data to the Germans and many civilians were denouncing Jewish families for a fee. According to data collected by the main research center in the field, the CDEC in Milan, half of the known arrests of Jews were carried out directly by Italian police and militia. Between these two extremes were civilians willing to render certain services to Jews in hiding or en route to freedom by purchasing and selling goods, or by offering transportation and protection for remunerations that ranged from a reasonable exchange to the ruthless exploitation of people who, faced with a death threat,  had no other option.

A considerable percentage of this group made illegal crossings over the Italian-Swiss border. Some were hidden by friends in convents or city hospitals while others fled to the countryside and found refuge in stables and farmhouses. In many instances, Jewish individuals and families on the run not only had to find places to hide but needed to cover the costs of their precarious lodging, which meant the mobilization of non-Jews became key to their survival. They provided housing, food, information and money; and some municipal employees and antifascist networks also provided blank or false identity cards.

The main rescue and assistance operation in Italy – as well as the most extensive – was organized by the Jewish relief agency Delasem (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti), funded by well-to-do Italian families and, in proportions that increased substantially from 1943, by the American Joint Distribution Committee.

After the abrupt shutdown of the Committee for Jewish Emigration, Delasem was created in 1939, with clearance from the Italian government and under its control, to assist and facilitate the expulsion from Europe of German Jews forced to leave their country after the establishment of Eichmann’s Central Agency for Jewish Emigration. With time, the leaders of Delasem identified some individuals outside the Jewish community network willing to support their operation. When, in 1943, the organization was forced to go underground, a handful of them became key figures to carry on relief and rescue work.

At that point, the JDC funds, smuggled into Italy via Switzerland, were being distributed to the Jews in hiding, chiefly with the help of Father Francesco Repetto in Genoa, the Capuchins Père Marie Benoit in Rome and Don Leto Casini in Florence. These clergymen had been called upon by Delasem, whose leaders included Lelio Valobra, Raffaele Cantoni, Berl Grosser, Settimio Sorani, and Massimo Teglio who could no longer operate officially; and Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici and Rabbi Nathan Cassuto, both of whom were denounced and deported to Auschwitz while working to save lives. After the war, all of them stated to have acted independently of any higher directions. No other operation of mass rescue and assistance of the Jews in Italy has been documented.

In the Fall of 1938, the Italian government issued the Racial Laws, labeling 51,000 (including 10,000 who were deemed as “foreigners”) individuals “of Jewish race”. They became objects of political, social, cultural and economic discrimination and were designated second-class citizens. These racist policies were codified into law and implemented by way of very detailed administrative bills and decrees. The key tenets of fascist anti-Semitism included: the expulsion of students and teachers from public schools; the barring of individuals from holding positions in public administration, the professions or cultural and creative trades; the confiscation of business and real estate assets above a certain value or number of employees and the withdrawal of permission to exit the country with money, assets or stocks. Jews who were born abroad or had been stripped of Italian citizenship by the laws were ordered to leave the country by March 12, 1939. Approximately 9,000 Jews labeled as “foreigners” were forced to leave Italy before March 1939. Another estimated 6,500 Jews with Italian citizenship left the country. According the the JDC, 6,000 Italian Jews had converted by that same date. The Racial Laws were applied with unparalleled zeal and did not encounter opposition among Italian institutions and the general pupulation. The Church intervened solely to affirm its authority over children of mixed marriages who were raised as Catholics.

Following the laws, the Jewish community was left impoverished and strongly reduced in numbers due to emigration and conversion.