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Italy's Fascist Jews Italy’s Fascist Jews: Insights on an Unusual Scenario edited by Michele Sarfatti Issue n. 11, October 2017 QUEST N. 11 QUEST. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC Editors Guri Schwarz (Università di Genova, Editor in chief), Elissa Bemporad (Queens College of the City University of New York), Tullia Catalan (Università di Trieste), Cristiana Facchini (Alma Mater, Università di Bologna), Gadi Luzzatto Voghera (Fondazione CDEC), Michele Sarfatti (Fondazione CDEC), Marcella Simoni (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia), Ulrich Wyrwa (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Berlin). Editorial Assistants Laura Brazzo – Managing Editor (Fondazione CDEC) Sara Airoldi – Editorial Assistant (Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism ) Matteo Perissinotto - Editorial Assistant (Università di Trieste) Book Review Editor Dario Miccoli (Università Cà Foscari, Venezia) Editorial Advisory Board Ruth Ben Ghiat (New York University), Paolo Luca Bernardini (Università dell’Insubria), Dominique Bourel (Université de la Sorbonne, Paris), Michael Brenner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Enzo Campelli (Università La Sapienza di Roma), Francesco Cassata (Università di Genova), David Cesarani z.l. (Royal Holloway College, London), Marco Cuzzi (Università degli Studi di Milano), Roberto Della Rocca (DEC, Milano), Lois Dubin (Smith College, Northampton), Jacques Ehrenfreund (Université de Lausanne), Katherine E. Fleming (New York University), Anna Foa (Università La Sapienza Roma), Ada Gigli Marchetti (Università degli Studi di Milano), François Guesnet (University College, London), Alessandro Guetta (INALCO, Paris), Stefano Jesurum (Corriere della Sera, Milano), András Kovács (Central European University, Budapest), Fabio Levi (Università degli Studi di Torino), Simon Levis Sullam (Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia), Germano Maifreda (Univesità degli studi di Milano), Renato Mannheimer (ISPO, Milano), Giovanni Miccoli (Università degli Studi di Trieste), Dan Michman (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem), Michael Miller (Central European University, Budapest), Alessandra Minerbi (Fondazione CDEC, Milano), Liliana Picciotto (Fondazione CDEC, Milano), Marcella Ravenna (Università di Ferrara), Milena Santerini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano), Perrine Simon-Nahum (EHESS, Paris), Francesca Sofia (Università Alma Mater Studiorum di Bologna), David Sorkin (Yale), Emanuela Trevisan Semi (Università Cà Foscari di Venezia), Christian Wiese (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) QUEST. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History Journal of Fondazione CDEC ISSN: 2037-741X via Eupili 8, 20145 Milano Italy Reg. Trib. Milano n. 403 del 18/09/2009 P. IVA: 12559570150 tel. 003902316338 fax 00390233602728 www.quest-cdecjournal.it [email protected] Cover image credit: Renzo Ravenna with Italo Balbo and Vittorio Emanuele III. Ferrara 31 October 1928. Dalle leggi antiebraiche alla Shoah. Sette anni di storia italiana 1938-1945, eds. Valeria Galimi, Alessandra Minerbi, Michele Sarfatti, Liliana Picciotto (Milan: Skira 2004). II QUEST N. 11 Contents FOCUS Michele Sarfatti Introduction p. V Enrica Asquer Being a Fascist Jew in Autumn 1938: Self-portrayals from the “Discrimination” Requests Addressed to the Regime p. 1 Simon Levis Sullam Uncovering the Italian Muscle Jews: From Zionist Gymnastics to Fascist Boxing p. 29 René Moerhle Fascist Jews in Trieste: Social, Cultural and Political Dynamics 1919-1938 p. 46 Roberta Raspagliesi Fascist Jews Between Politics and the Economy: Five Biographical Profiles p. 75 DISCUSSION Chaim Gans, A Political Theory for the Jewish People by Ian S. Lustick p. 104 by Samuel Hayim Brody p. 112 III QUEST N. 11 REVIEWS Menahem Klein, Lives in Commons: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron by Marion Lecoquierre p. 121 Debarati Sanyal, Memory and Complicity. Migration of Holocaust Remembrance by Martina Mengoni p. 124 Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land. The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century by Roni Weinstein p. 129 Yonatan Mendel and Ronald Ranta, From the Arab Other to the Israeli Self: Palestinian Culture in the Making of Israeli National Identity by Guy Ben-Porat p. 134 Bruno Pischedda, L’idioma molesto. Cecchi e la letteratura novecentesca a sfondo razziale by Raffaella Perin p. 137 Darius Staliūnas, Enemies for a Day: Antisemitism and Anti-Jewish Violence in Lithuania under the Tsars by Marina Mogilner p. 140 Jonathan Goldstein, Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia by Marcella Simoni p. 144 IV QUEST N. 11 – FOCUS Italy’s Fascist Jews: Insights on an Unusual Scenario by Michele Sarfatti On 23 March 1919, in a small hall in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan, Benito Mussolini founded a movement called Fasci di combattimento [Fasci of Combat], which in November 1921 became the Partito nazionale fascista [National Fascist Party, PNF]. The Associazione nazionalista italiana [Italian Nationalist Association] merged with the party in 1923. On 31 October 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III invited Mussolini to form the Kingdom of Italy’s new government. Mussolini was Prime Minister continuously until 25 July 1943. During that time, he reversed the principles of the liberal democracy that had previously existed, set up a dictatorship, and established a totalitarian regime. The political program of the Fasci di combattimento and, up to 1937, that of the PNF did not include anti-Jewish views or aims. Fascism would proclaim and officially adopt them in 1938. For many years, therefore, Italian Jews who wished to do so could adhere to the Fascist ideology, join the PNF, become involved in the party’s public and inner life, and take on important administrative roles (like the podestà [mayor] of Ferrara, shown in the cover photo of this issue). Between September and November 1938, after two years of an intense anti- Semitic campaign, the Fascist Italian government enacted a body of very harsh anti-Jewish laws: the rules relating to schools and those affecting foreigners, passed in Italy in September, were harsher than those in force in Germany in that same month. One decree concerned the “Aryanisation” of the PNF. The drafting process of this rule proved very complex. On 7 November the Council of Ministers approved the draft of a decree titled Modificazioni allo Statuto del Partito Nazionale Fascista [Changes to the Statutes of the National Fascist Party], which ruled: “Italian citizens who are considered of Jewish race as per provisions in law and do not fall within any of the exemptions provided for in the laws themselves cannot be members of the PNF.” The part about “exemptions” referred to a provision contained in another law, which decreed that Jews who had acquired so-called “merits” in war, towards the nation or towards Fascism would be exempt from some of the persecutory measures. This partial exemption was given the (nowadays absurd-sounding) name of I Michele Sarfatti discriminazione [discrimination]. Actually, despite all the announcements that were made, “discrimination” was very sparingly implemented,1 and in most sectors persecution struck both “discriminated” and “non-discriminated” Italian Jews equally. So it happened in the case of PNF membership: on 19 November the words “and do not fall within any of the exemptions provided for in the laws themselves” were expunged from the decree’s typewritten final draft and on 21 November the King appended his signature under the thus mutilated text. It is also of note that this decree was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia [Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Italy] only on 13 February 1939, a very unusual delay.2 In conclusion, the official severing of the tie between Italian Fascism and Fascist Jews was no easy matter. It is also not without interest that, chronologically, the decree of 19 November was the last of the 1938 anti-Jewish laws to come into force. In any case, all card-carrying members who were classified as “of Jewish race” (that is, both those that were born of two parents of that “race” and those who, while having only one parent of that “race,” were not christened) were expelled from the PNF within a short time.3 This issue of Quest is devoted to the subject of Fascist Italian Jews. Its main purpose is to trace and compare the life path of some of them and to start looking more closely at some aspects of their experience with Fascism and of their being Jewish. The focus will be on the twenty years during which Fascism allowed them to feel Fascist and to be card-carrying members of the PNF. The history of Fascist Jews still awaits to be fully researched in its complexity. Several historians have described and commented on the periodical La nostra bandiera [Our Flag], which was published from 1934 to 1938. Their studies, however, focus almost entirely on those years and either ignore the fifteen years that went before or deal with them in a few sentences. Of course, the magazine’s 1 Michele Sarfatti, The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy. From Equality to Persecution, trans. by John and Anne C. Tedeschi, (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 2006), 135-7. 2 Michele Sarfatti, Mussolini contro gli ebrei. Cronaca dell’elaborazione delle leggi del 1938, (Turin: S. Zamorani, 1994), 55-6. 3 For a letter of expulsion, dated November 29, 1938, see Riccardo Di Donato, “Materiali per una biografia intellettuale di Arnaldo Momigliano, 1. Libertà e pace nel mondo antico”, Athenaeum 83/1 (1995): 219 note 25; cf. also the relevant file in the PNF Turin Collection held
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