Exile and Creativity, published by CPL Editions, is a collection of essays from a program series held in 2017-18 by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York jointly with Centro Primo Levi. The programs examine the lives of Italian man and women who were forced or chose exile during the Fascist era. Whereas the narratives of exile tend to focus on the experience of disorientation and loss, as the curator of the series, Giorgio Van Straten states in the introduction, exile is “also something found: an opportunity, a new culture capable of sparking unexpected, unforeseen developments along one’s path through life and, therefore, the possible enrichment of one’s humanistic and cultural heritage”. 

Exile and Creativity, published by CPL Editions, is a collection of essays from a program series held in 2017-18 by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York jointly with Centro Primo Levi. The programs examine the lives of Italian man and women who were forced or chose exile during the Fascist era. Whereas the narratives of exile tend to focus on the experience of disorientation and loss, as the curator of the series, Giorgio Van Straten states in the introduction, exile is “also something found: an opportunity, a new culture capable of sparking unexpected, unforeseen developments along one’s path through life and, therefore, the possible enrichment of one’s humanistic and cultural heritage”. ?

Carlo Ginzburg (April 15, 1939 – Turin, Italy) is a noted Italian historian, the son of Natalia Ginzburg, a novelist, and Leone Ginzburg, a philologist, historian, and literary critic. Ginzburg received a PhD from the University of Pisa in 1961. He subsequently held teaching positions at the University of Bologna, at the University of California, Los Angeles (1988–2006), and st the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. His fields of interest range from the Italian Renaissance to early modern European history, with contributions to art history, literary studies, and the theory of historiography. He is best known for Il Formaggio e i Vermi – The Cheese and the Worms (1976), which examines the beliefs of Menocchio, a 16th century miller twice undergoing trial by the Roman Inquisition. In this book, Ginzburg highlights, on the basis of an analysis of the trial’s papers, the different aspects of the surprisingly varied universe of Menocchio’s cultural, philosophical, political and religious orientations, only to a small extent due to the influence of a “higher” culture. In 1966, he published The Night Battles, an examination of the benandanti’s visionary folk tradition found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Friuli in northeastern Italy. He returned to looking at the visionary traditions of early modern Europe for his 1989 book Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. In the eighties he directed the “Microstorie” series published by Einaudi, with Giovanni Levi. He is part of the scientific council of the magazine Communications. He is Academic Correspondent of the Academy of Arts of Drawing, in Florence, and honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Prix Aby Warburg in 1992 and, in 2005, the Feltrinelli Prize of the Accademia dei Lincei, for Historical Sciences. From the Accademia dei Lincei, in 2010, he was awarded the Balzan Prize. His books are translated into more than twenty languages.

Saul Friedländer (October 11, 1932) is an Israeli/American historian and currently Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA. From 1953-55, he studied Political Science in Paris; in 1963, he received a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he taught until 1988. Friedländer also taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Tel Aviv University. In 1969 he wrote a biography of Kurt Gerstein. Since 1988 he has been Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is considered one of the world’s premier historians in the field of the Holocaust, and the author of the definitive book Nazi-Germany and the Jews 1933-1945, thst has transformed our understanding of this period by weaving into a coherent whole the perspectives of ordinary Germans, party activists, military and political figures, and, most importantly, victims and survivors. Drawing from documents, films, recollections, and his personal experience, he reconstructs these events with a judicious tone that defies the nature of the subject and demonstrates the interplay of memory and representation in the interpretation of historic events. Friedländer shows that a rational and many-sided reinterpretation of the evidence deepens a reader’s understanding of the nature, meaning, and complexity of the Holocaust. His works include Pius XII and the Third Reich, (1965), History and Psychoanalysis (1979), When Memory Comes (1979), Reflections on Nazism (1984), Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume One: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (1997), and Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume Two: The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945 (2008).

Toscanini was staunchly opposed to the growth of fascism in Europe. In Italy in 1931, he was attacked for refusing to play the fascist anthem. Toscanini had been the first non-German to conduct at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth, Germany, but he opted not to attend the festival in 1933 due to the Nazi regime. In 1936, Toscanini traveled to Palestine to conduct a group of Jewish musicians who had fled Europe.

Attuned to the post-war growing technological needs of government and population, Viterbi and his colleagues began to work in an area where scientific research and capitalistic enterprise could support one another. His main contribution to science, the Viterbi Algorithm, found application in different fields, ultimately leading up to the co-founding of Qualcomm, which became one of the most important communication companies worldwide.

His father came from an intellectual but impoverished youth, and imbued family life with the principles of education and social responsibility. Family politics in America were very much in tune with the Democratic party of Franklin Roosevelt, who had favored the poor over the wealthy in raising the nation out of the Depression.

The legal approach is novel to the historical discourse on this time period, which has previously focused on political and social perspectives. Livingston writes in the book: “As compared to Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia, Fascist Italy offered at least a limited amount of independence to judges and lawyers, and a courageous few used this independence to ameliorate or limit the damage resulting from the laws. But many others expanded them and, by providing technical assistance in drafting and interpreting the Race Laws, lawyers were indispensable in making the laws effective.

The Lateran Pacts were the first of a series of concordats the Vatican signed with European totalitarian regimes: it was followed by the Reichskonkordat with Hitler’s Germany in 1933. The Pacts deeply affected many aspects of Italian society and changed the ethical parameters that had shaped social welfare, scientific research, medical practice and the Italian education system up to that moment. They also impacted family law and the penal and civil codes. Most significantly, the Lateran Pacts restricted the status of religious minorities, which at the time were primarily the Jews and the Valdesians. Italian Jews had participated at all levels in the process of unification of the country. The creation of the liberal state between 1861 and 1870 had forever abolished ghettos and established the equality of all citizens. Since the early 20th century, Jews had held high positions in Italian public life, with a disproportionate representation in Parliament – two prime ministers and many prominent exponents not only in politics, but in academia, science and the arts.

In his testimony as a survivor, in the “necessity” that moved him to become a writer, in his ethic need to say, to make known, Primo Levi has transmitted the devastating effects of this de-subjectivising experience, and has given an extraordinarily human voice to that which is inhuman and unsayable.

Reflecting upon the causes and the implications of this “ immense biological and social experience,” as he defines it, Levi, the story teller, ponders on the issue of segregation in our own times, on the heritage the camps have bequeathed on the present, establishing a disquieting continuity between past aberrations and present normality, showing beyond any doubt how the present is subtly interwoven by the logic of the past.

In his hallucinated fiction, and, specifically, in his play La bella addormentata nel frigo (Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge), Levi shows with great acumen and perspicacity the strict relationship between science, new technologies, and subjective alienation, as well as the ways in which normality, the tranquility of a prosperous life, are in fact the product of a bio-political normativity, universally accepted with careless complicity. As a reminder of our own situation, Levi writes: “Monsters do exist but are too few to be really dangerous; by far more dangerous are common men, executives always ready to believe and obey without ever questioning what they are told.”

Film Screening: Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge, 1979, a rare fiction short, is based on Levi’s story with the same title and produced by the Italian television in collaboration with the author. In Italian w/English subtitles (16’). Paola Mieli (psychoanalyst, New York, Paris) on Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge, Gérard Haddad (psychoanalyst, Paris) on The Mirror’s Maker, and Daniela Schiller (neuroscientist, Mount Sinai, NY) on a story to be announced.

Cross-analysis of the data in administrative, notarial and criminal records, with data found in the laws, rules and treatises highlight the need to include a full history of the Jews in the overall history of Europe. Thus the history of the Jews finds its place as an integral and fundamental part in the European transformational processes offering insight into historical phenomena of general interest such as the definition of heresy, the hunt for banned books, the interpretation of witchcraft, sexual exchanges, the construction of the “lexicon of injury”, discrimination, the discourse on rights and citizenship, the development of international trade and cross-cultural exchanges, etc.

During the modern era, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Italian society was less closed than we usually think, and the Jews (with their culture, their books and their representatives) had their place within it, despite strict rules and the recurring anti-Jewish propaganda. The history of the Jews and their historical relations with Christians is a central chapter of the history of Italy and an extremely relevant one today, in view of the challenges posed by the coexistence of different religions and cultures and the problems regarding the way a society relates to minorities.

Within this interpretative framework, Marina Caffiero will discuss the relationships and exchanges – cultural, social and institutional – between the Jewish minority and the Christian majority. Although the Jews were viewed as “different”, thus dangerous to the established religious and secular powers, they participated in most aspects of daily life in the Italian cities of the time. Caffiero’s argument, grounded in the comparison between the evolution of legislation regarding the Jews and newly found inquisitorial documents, points to a significant gap between the rules governing Jewish lives and their actual impact on peoples lives. Despite severe restrictions, Jews and Christians often found places and times for ongoing discussion and cross contamination. In other words, Italian society during the modern era was characterized by a far greater freedom and open mindedness than its own rules and prohibitions suggest.

Serena Di Nepi’s work focuses on the years immediately before and after the establishment of the ghettos commissioned by Pope Paul IV Carafa (1555). Starting with an analysis of the political and religious climate in Rome at the time of the arrival of Jewish refugees from Spain in 1493, and the protection accorded to them by an Iberian Pope, Alexander VI Borgia, Di Nepi traces the steps that led to cultural and ideological changes during the first half of the sixteenth century, leading to the Church’s policy of accepting the Jews, but segregating them while awaiting for their conversion. The alternative to the ghetto was the expulsion of the Jews, a possibility which was in fact examined and discarded. Ultimately it was decided to force them into a cloistered existence, following the 1513 Libellus of Querini and Giustiniani. Through a detailed examination of Jewish and Christian documents, it is possible to draw a picture of the Jewish condition in Rome immediately before the erection of the ghetto and in the following decades. In doing so, questions arise concerning the Jews’ survival strategies and the ways in which despite everything, they were able to endure more than three centuries of imprisonment and aggressive proselytism. Further, Di Nepi will highlight the key role of the rabbinate in the management of Jewish institutions and communal life, drawing on parallelisms between the Rabbinate’s attempts to discipline and confessionalize and similar intents well documented within the Christian world.

For the first time since the early investigations, this panel will inaugurate the study of the content and history of the library, as it emerges through the registers of Inquisition censorship, community chronicles and other historical sources dating back to the 15th century.

The officers examined the books. On October 11th they returned to announce that the libraries would be seized. Two days later the EinsatzstabReichsleiter Rosenberg, the German agency in charge of seizing Jewish books and art, sacked the building and took both libraries. The two libraries were allegedly transferred to Germany aboard three trains: two in October and a third one in December.

In 1946, the Allies located the Rabbinical library near Frankfurt and facilitated its return to Rome in 1950. No trace was ever found of the Jewish communal library of Rome. Although various investigations were conducted, the last as part of the Anselmi Commission on the confiscation of Jewish assets in 1999-2001, its fate remains obscure. Over the years, hypotheses multiplied and at least few volumes emerged in Holland and at the JTS library in New York. Information and testimonies concerning its departure remain vague, research incomplete and many questions are still open. A panel of experts will analyze the history of the investigations and discuss future efforts to recover this treasure.

Speakers : Serena Di Nepi, University of Rome La Sapienza and Jewish Museum of Rome, Agnes Peresztegi, Commission for Art Recovery, Alex Karn, Colgate University. Moderated by Natalia Indrimi, Centro Primo Levi.  

Pontecorboli retraces the threads of their stories, personal recollections and historical background, their strategies to exit Italy and those to find a visa to the US. She reconstructs their first steps in the New World, their networks of mutual support, their successes and drawbacks, their encounters with fascism and antifascism in America, their different and at times conflicting choices of adaptation and survival.

Written in a fast paced journalistic style, the book is both a good read as well as an important contribution to cultural history, marking a starting point for a whole new field of inquiry.

Among the protagonists of the book are Tullia Calabi e Bruno Zevi, Max Ascoli, Giorgio Cavaglieri, Achille Viterbi, Amelia Rosselli, Silvano Arieti, Emilio Segré, Franco Modigliani, Paolo Milano, Salvador Luria, Massimo Calabresi, Ugo Fano and Giorgio Levi della Vida. Probably the smallest national group among European exiles, the Italians distinguished themselves for their willingness and ability to create from the start bridges between Italy and their new country.

Some took part in the liberation of Europe from the Nazi-Fascist dictatorships, working with the US armed forces, others focused on Italian life in America. After the war, some chose to remain, while many returned to Italy. Four of those who remained in America won the Nobel Prize. The experience of exile originated important postwar cultural and economic trends. All too often however, the violence and injustice that had caused the exile was forgotten. The book traces the personal stories of men, women and their families who became an unlikely bridge not only between two countries, but between two eras.

The English edition, with its extensive bibliography, ample notes, and biographical sketches of the individuals mentioned in the text constitutes a substantial reference point for future scholarly research.

In the past two decades, with a large amount of primary sources still untapped, research has began to investigate the modalities through which Fascism sought to control Italians abroad and, through them, maintain relations with countries that were not under totalitarian rule.

Italian Americans’ self-images during those years were shaped by propaganda, foreign press reports, economic interests, and the establishment of the Fascist League of North America on the one hand, and by the Regime’s cultural and educational showcases along with a network of local police informants, on the other.

Fascism, however, was forced to adapt its methods to the requirements and style of the American society and values producing ambiguous cultural and political categories that continued to operate after Mussolini’s fall and the end of World War II.

How did the Italian American community and their leadership negotiate their position and role within the larger horizon of the relations between the US and Italy and the US and the Catholic Church? How did ethnic leaders and intellectuals of Italian background interpret the relation between dictatorship and democracy within the Italian communities in the US? To what extent were Italian American radicals also antifascists? How did they respond to Fascism and what relations did they develop with the mainstream Italian American population, by and large supportive of Fascism, and with various factions of Italian antifascist in exile?

The study of Italian American history, politics and culture during the Fascist Regime provides an important dimension to better understand Italian Fascism. It also contributes important sources for research topics that are crucial part of Centro Primo Levi’s ongoing activities, such as the story of the Italian Jewish exiles in America and the role of the Italian press, publishing and cultural propaganda in the US. The discussion opened by this seminar will continue in future sessions addressing more specific issues about antisemitism in the US, the Italian Jewish exiles in America and the transition to the post-war period.

As many as 2,000 Jewish exiles arrived in the US in the wake of the Racial Laws. To what degree did anti-Semitism resonate among Italian Americans whose relation with Jews had been defined by the immigrant experience and, for some, by common activism in the unions? What does this Italian-American story add to our reading of the development of racial policies in Italy and of the arrival of the Italian Jewish exiles in America?

This seminar is a first step toward addressing these questions by analyzing some aspects of Fascist outreach in America, its reception and consequences. 

He was notorious as Benito Mussolini’s military commander in the colonial wars in Ethiopia and Libya, where he carried out massacres and used chemical weapons against the local population. [BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19267099].

Associations including ANED (Italian Association of Deportees), ANPI (Association of Resistance Partisans) and UCEI (Union of the Italian Jewish Communities) have made formal requests to remove the mausoleum. This roundtable will discuss Graziani’s role under fascism, rehabilitation attempts of Fascist war leaders in Italy and public opposition to this political trend.

Historian of Italian colonialism Lidia Santarelli will discuss Graziani’s role in Italian colonialist wars in Africa as well as his interventions in domestic politics. The panel will also address the failure of international sanctions and protests against the first use of poison gas against civilians. Ethiopian filmmaker YemaneDemissie will show and comment his documentary work on Ethiopian survivors of the 1937 massacre ordered by Graziani. The program is presented in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Justice – The Ethiopian Cause.