Fleeing for Safety: From Mantua to Switzerland

Description

Fleeing for Safety: From Mantua to Switzerland weaves together two narratives, one picking up where the other leaves off—like the passing of a torch. Corrado Vivanti begins with the period leading up to Italy’s 1938 racial laws and ends with his family’s flight to Switzerland. His mother, Clelia Della Pergola, takes over from their traumatic border crossing to the first days of January 1945. 

Though their accounts differ, both share a lack of self-pity and a restrained, matter-of-fact tone. This echoes many early testimonies of persecution: a sense of shame, as described in the opening chapter of Primo Levi’s La Tregua (The Truce).

About the Authors

Corrado Vivanti (Mantua, 1928 – Turin, 2012) was Professor of History of Political Thought at the University of Turin and of Modern History at the Universities of Perugia and Rome, La Sapienza. After the war, he joined the halutzimmovement and lived in Israel from 1950 to 1953. Upon returning to Italy, he earned a degree from the University of Florence with a thesis on 18th-century agrarian reform in the Mantuan countryside, advised by Delio Cantimori. From 1957 to 1962, he studied in Paris with Fernand Braudel. In 1962, he was invited by Einaudi to oversee its history section. He co-edited ten volumes of La storia d’Italia with Ruggero Romano, curated the Opere of Niccolò Machiavelli, and, in 1996–97, edited Gli ebrei in Italia. In 2002, he received the Premio Presidente della Repubblica per la Storia from the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

Clelia Della Pergola Vivanti (Florence, 1896 – Mantua, 1981) was the second daughter of Raffaello Della Pergola and Emilia Todeschini. Her family moved from Florence to Mantua, where she began working at age thirteen in her uncles’ furrier shop, later taking it over with a cousin. In 1919, she married Moise Gino Vivanti and had two children, Arrigo and Corrado. Defying expectations, she continued working after marriage and resumed her trade following the family’s escape to Switzerland in 1943. She remained active in the business until the day before her death at age eighty-five.