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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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.
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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).
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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 history, Typewritten 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
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 […].”[/icon_timeline_item][icon_timeline_item time_title=”September 1938- March 12, 1939″]
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.[/icon_timeline_item][icon_timeline_feat time_title=”Exile”]
Most Italian Jews who were able to leave, did so before the outbreak of World War II, by September 1939. Departures continued in small numbers in 1940 and 1941, slowed down by Italy’s entry into the war in June 1940 and finally interrupted in December 1941, when the United Stated entered the conflict. Some Italian Jews, especially from Fiume, left as “foreigners” after having been stripped of the citizenship. With this first measure, the Italian Jewish communities, that had been centralized and placed under government’s control in 1931, lost the class that connected them to the institutions of the State, part of its leadership and a considerable segment of the economy. The process that would bring to the complete isolation of the Jewish population in Italy had begun.
[/icon_timeline_feat][icon_timeline_item time_title=”Reactions”]
The 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.[/icon_timeline_item][icon_timeline_item time_title=”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 
Enrico 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.[/icon_timeline_item][/icon_timeline]
