Gather What You Can and Flee

The emigration of Jews from Italy as a result of Fascist persecution was a major phenomenon in 20th-century Italian history. It led to a significant “brain drain” that deeply affected Italy’s scientific and cultural development in the postwar years. Despite its importance, this subject was long neglected in Italian historiography, which tended to focus more on emigration driven by economic motives or political dissent. Apart from scattered references in studies on political opposition abroad (the so-called fuoruscitismo), in works on specific destinations, or in personal memoirs, the first comprehensive treatment of Jewish emigration appeared in an essay by Mario Toscano, first published in 1988 and later republished in 2003.

Since then, increased attention to the cultural and professional consequences of anti-Jewish persecution has brought renewed interest to the subject. Data and insights on Jewish migration from Italy can now be found in broader studies of the persecution, in research on Italy’s policies toward foreign Jews seeking refuge, and in accounts of the expulsion of Jewish professors from universities and their often difficult postwar reintegration.

Annalisa Capristo’s essay offers a clear and concise synthesis of the key themes of Jewish emigration from Italy after 1938. These include the nature of the persecution; estimates—however imprecise—of the scale and character of the migration; and the cultural and scientific consequences both for Italy and for the countries that received the émigrés. Special attention is given to those who resettled in the United States and their lasting contributions.

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About the Author

Annalisa Capristo received her degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and a postgraduate degree in Library and Information Science from the Vatican School of Library Sciences. She has held fellowships from the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, the Vatican Library, and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. She is currently the librarian at the Centro Studi Americani in Rome.

Capristo’s research focuses on the impact of the Fascist anti-Semitic laws on Italian intellectual and academic life, including the reactions of Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals and the emigration of Jewish scholars—especially to the Americas. Her publications include L’espulsione degli ebrei dalle accademie italiane (Turin, 2002), as well as several essays, including “The Exclusion of Jews from Italian Academies” (Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, ed. J.D. Zimmerman, Cambridge University Press, 2005) and “Italian Intellectuals and the Exclusion of Their Jewish Colleagues from Universities and Academies” (Telos 164, Fall 2013).