Shira Klein. Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 378 pp. $120.00, cloth, ISBN 978-1-108-42410-3.

Reviewed by Robert Gordon

Published on H-Judaic (August, 2019)

Commissioned by Barbara Krawcowicz (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Shira Klein’s ambitious book explores a series cities; community journals and other media (in‐ of dynamically intersecting axes in the history of cluding comics, material culture, and radio); Jew‐ Italy’s Jewish community from the mid-nine‐ ish history archives in Italy, the United States, teenth to the mid-twentieth centuries and by ex‐ South America, and Israel; and studies in substan‐ tension and comparison also contributes to the tial felds of historiography on Italian Jewish his‐ modern history of European Jewry more broadly. tory. This latter bibliography is extensively cited Areas examined in its eight extensively re‐ in the notes, but there is a certain patchiness or searched and often vividly written core chapters lack of engagement with key contributions, lead‐ include emancipation and nationalization, assimi‐ ing to an overplaying or even misconception of lation and integration, exclusion and persecution, the book’s own original contribution to research. exile, nostalgia, and return. These complex and There are useful local comparisons with other Eu‐ entangled histories are perhaps, ultimately, too ropean contexts, especially France and Germany, many for the book to hold together and sustain, and occasional nods to the history of the Catholic and its structure and general coherence, as well Church, which always looms large in Italian and as at times its self-positioning within the feld, sag European Jewish history, as well as to strands in and blur somewhat as a result. There are never‐ the general historiography of modern Italian his‐ theless valuable contributions made here, includ‐ tory and culture, although at times this Italian ing the excavation of signifcant new sources, a feld feels too thinly present. This leads to occa‐ concerted emphasis on gender and women’s his‐ sional slips (for example, Primo Levi was not, sad‐ tory, and a fertile attempt to integrate the history ly, a “Nobel laureate” [p. 13]) or to local insensitiv‐ of Italy’s Jews with its transnational diasporas, ities, such as to the term “nazifascist,” which suggesting how each mutually infuenced the oth‐ needs to be linked to the lexicon of the anti-Fascist er. Communist Resistance before it can be related to The book is built on doctoral research and the relative Nazi or Fascist roles in the Holocaust uses an impressive array of diferent materials (p. 222). An uneven national picture makes cer‐ and methods, including twenty-fve oral history tain key judgments about how much the Jewish interviews carried out by the author; private fam‐ communities difered from national (or regional) ily archives and ego-documents; Jewish communi‐ realities extremely hard to gauge: for example, re‐ ty archives in several diferent Italian towns and garding crucial questions, such as attitudes and H-Net Reviews allegiance to the nation-state, “consent” to Fas‐ cutions of 1943-45. As Klein vividly shows, this cism, participation in the Resistance, or shared was accompanied in the non-Jewish population perceptions of national character. One example: both by heroic rescuers and by many enthusiastic how signifcantly does our assessment of the rea‐ or venally corrupt local supporters of the Nazis sons that Jews in postwar Italy brushed Italian and Fascists (as chronicled recently for the occu‐ culpability for anti-Semitism under the carpet pation period in Simon Levis Sullam’s The Italian (discussed in chapter 8) alter if we set it in line Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy with the widespread tendency at the time, led by [2018, in Italian 2015]). the greatest public thinker and philosopher of the Chapters 5 and 6 move in interesting and day, Benedetto Croce, for Italians to brush the en‐ original new directions by mapping out the expe‐ tire history of Fascism under the carpet, to see it riences of the small—a few hundred in each case in Croce’s famous metaphor as a “parenthesis” in —groups and families of Italian Jews who left the progressive, democratizing movement of na‐ Italy during the period of persecution, escaping to tional history? America (chapter 5) or to Palestine (chapter 6). In Each of the eight chapters begins with a vi‐ each instance, Klein is interested in how these gnette or anecdote drawn from little-known or groups maintained or indeed attempted to reject a unpublished memoirs or interviews, designed to certain perception of the Italy they had left be‐ set the stage for a compilation of key aspects of hind, of its Fascism and its anti-Semitism, while at the particular moment or phase in the history ad‐ the same time typically holding onto Italy as an dressed in the chapter. The frst and the widest in object of emigrant nostalgia and community, of‐ scope examines the period from 1848, the date of ten faithfully reconstructed in such social prac‐ the preunifcation Albertine Statute commonly tices as home building, food culture, and other taken as the moment of emancipation of Italy’s shared customs. Both are especially rich on the Jews, through national unifcation (1861), the First complex cross-currents and tensions between World War, and the frst decade and a half of the these diasporic communities and other intersect‐ Fascist regime (1922-38). It focuses in particular ing groups in the new “host” country, such as the on the construction of a deep-rooted and connect‐ millions of Italian Americans who were variously ed Jewish prosperity and patriotism, which was anti-Semitic or pro-Fascist, who welcomed Jewish sustained and strengthened over nearly a century exiles, and/or who fercely exhibited patriotism of a largely successful individual and communal toward America (after 1941, at least); or the Is‐ life experience. Chapter 2, pushing against cri‐ raeli kibbutzniks who tried and largely failed to tiques of Italian Jewish assimilation over this peri‐ convert the middle-class urban immigrant Italian od, presents instead a mosaic of evidence of a vi‐ Jews to agriculture, socialism, and the Zionism of brant, autonomous practice of Jewish religion and the land. culture in this same period, suggesting that Italy’s Finally, chapters 7 and 8 take us back to Italy Jews were fully able to feel and to live, simultane‐ and the beginning of the reconstruction era dur‐ ously and (largely) pacifcally, as both Italian and ing the fnal months of the war and the years fol‐ Jewish, up until and including during the Fascist lowing. Here the infuence of Guri Schwarz’s After era (pre-1938). Chapters 3 and 4 are presented as Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in syntheses of the rich recent feld of scholarship on Post-Fascist Italy [2012, in Italian 2004]) is fully Fascist anti-Semitism and the enactment of the acknowledged and developed. Chapter 7 looks in Holocaust in Italy, tracking from the regime’s fero‐ particular at how the American Joint Distribution cious racist campaigns and legislation of 1938-43 Committee generously supported community re‐ to the Nazi occupation and the murderous perse‐

2 H-Net Reviews construction but also encountered resistance of carefully researched narrative history, Alexan‐ when it tried to reshape and reorder the institu‐ der Stille’s Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian tions and communal practices of Italian Jewry, Jewish Families under Fascism (mentioned here which was itself tentatively fowering into a new in passing). On this crucial question of Jewish Fas‐ phase of confdence, while chapter 8 focuses on cist allegiance, in fact, Klein is notably uncertain how and why Italian Jews, as part of the efort to in her formulations, describing, variously, move on and to rebuild, tended to absolve their “many,” “most,” or “Jews, as a whole,” as “support‐ fellow Italians from culpability in the persecu‐ ing,” “accepting,” or “not opposing” the regime; tions carried out on Italian soil. or, oddly, adducing as evidence for a postwar dis‐ Across this ample range of periods and ques‐ tortion of the extent of the pro-Fascist views tions, covered through a colorful variety of among Jews the fact no public streets have been sources, the book aims to tease out and sustain a named after minor Jewish Fascist sympathizers clear, central, and ostensibly new hypothesis: that since the war (pp. 11-13, 44-45). Michele Sarfatti in Italian Jews were so deeply wedded to the nine‐ a recent journal special issue on Fascist Jews has teenth-century nation-building project in Italy, attempted a statistical tally and interpretation.[1] which had brought them emancipation and a sta‐ One telling symptom of the book’s ambiva‐ ble sense of Italian Jewish identity, that they lence over its principal aims and scope—but also tacked very close to the nationalist Fascist project a possible clue to redrawing its contours and of the 1920s and 1930s, even playing down the drawing out its strengths—lies in its title. Italy’s virulent wave of Fascist anti-Semitism when it hit Jews from Emancipation to Fascism looks very them in 1938. So powerful was this sense of na‐ much like a neutral and informative title and led tional belonging that they subsequently contrib‐ me to expect a descriptive survey of a century of uted to and consolidated (or even “helped to cre‐ community history from 1848 to 1945. And in‐ ate” [p. 132]) a powerful exculpatory postwar deed, large parts, although not all, of the book do myth of Italian immunity to racism, of an innate fulfll this promise. Here is a fascinating array of human decency in the Italian national character. descriptions and evocations of Italian Jewish life, This myth, commonly known as the myth of ital‐ with particular attention to history from below iani brava gente (Italians as “decent folk”) blamed and the everyday: Jewish soldiers on horseback, Jewish sufering on Nazis and Germans and Fas‐ colonial adventurers, charity work, professions, cist vices on the state or on Benito Mussolini him‐ cookbooks, fashion and leisure, youth groups and self, rather than on ordinary Italians. But the hy‐ education, marriage, language, prayer, politics, pothesis struggles to run as a consistent thread and more (even if, here, too, recent Italian schol‐ throughout book; indeed, the book is in many arship, such as Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti’s ways at its most interesting when it strays from Making Italian Jews: Family, Gender, Religion and the central line. And key aspects of the hypothesis, the Nation, 1861-1918 [2017, in Italian 2011], is which are presented as radically, even polemical‐ unevenly acknowledged). But, somewhat confus‐ ly, new—such as the fact that a signifcant propor‐ ingly, the very frst page of the introduction prom‐ tion of the Jewish population in Italy was con‐ ises something entirely diferent as the book’s vinced supporters of, or at least passive consen‐ principal aim, focused after 1945 and rooted in ters to, the Fascist state—are in reality not so sur‐ historiographical method not in communal or so‐ prising nor so novel within the research feld. cial history but in problems of collective self-rep‐ There has been signifcant scholarly work on this resentation and memory: “This book ofers a new question recently, in both Italian and English, not perspective on the myth of Italian benevolence in to mention as far back as 1991, in a superb work World War II [in other words, the brava gente

3 H-Net Reviews myth], and the role Jews played in its creation,” as ment of its fracture and near-collapse under the if all the history “from emancipation to Fascism” weight of appalling persecution, I am not fully evoked in the title were in reality functional to a convinced that it provides enough evidence that later period and another set of interpretative afective bonds built during that longer history di‐ problems not fagged up in the title at all (p. 1). rectly and predominantly caused the collective re‐ The core purpose of the book feels blurred. action to the moment of fracture, nor that the his‐ Confrmation comes in a striking copyediting tory or the reaction were uniform. The result of error on page 14, where, at least in the edition I this and of other difculties discussed here is a read, the book gets its own title wrong: opening its bold but unresolved book, which does not quite summary account of its chapters at the end of the achieve what it sets out to do and which perhaps introduction, Klein writes, “Clinging to Italy sets out to do too much at once, but nevertheless draws on previously unstudied primary sources.” one that opens up onto important felds and Was Clinging to Italy a previous title, perhaps the strands of research that are all too rarely exam‐ author’s preferred version, possibly changed late ined in the Anglophone academy and which in production? Was the current title originally a makes signifcant contributions to scholarship subtitle? As an alternative title, Clinging to Italy and debate within its 350 pages. immediately shifts the center of gravity of the Note book to chapters 5 and 6 on exile, where its most [1]. Michele Sarfatti, ed., “Italy’s Fascist Jews: original contribution to research probably lies, Insights on an Unusual Scenario,” Quest: Issues in and it also resonates nicely with the argument Contemporary Jewish History (October 11, 2017): about a disingenuous and stubborn loyalty to the http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/index.php?is‐ Italian state, even in the face of Fascist anti- sue=11#_ftn5. Semitism in the 1930s (clinging to an imagined Robert Gordon is the Serena Professor of Ital‐ Italy that no longer existed). It is not without its ian at the University of Cambridge. own problems, since it carries the risk of a broad- brush psychologism, of reading individual states of mind and emotions (“clinging”) into layered multigenerational communal and social histories, indeed of using the former as a causal historical explanation of the latter. (Symptomatic of how shaky this logic can seem comes in chapter 3, when the deep patriotic bond to Italy is apparent‐ ly evinced by the failure of 90 percent of Italian Jews to emigrate in 1938-40—one might think 10 percent is a high number, in fact, given the com‐ plexities and costs of emigration—or by the reluc‐ tance of Italian Jewish parents to send their chil‐ dren on “youth aliya” to Palestine [pp. 95-96]. More immediate and more commonly humane explanations are at hand.) Although the book performs an important service in setting the longer history of Italian Jew‐ ish life and community in close relation to the mo‐

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Citation: Robert Gordon. Review of Klein, Shira. Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism. H-Judaic, H- Net Reviews. August, 2019.

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