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Robert Gordon on Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism

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Robert Gordon on Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism 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 significant new sources, a field 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 influenced 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 different materials (p. 222). An uneven national picture makes cer‐ and methods, including twenty-five oral history tain key judgments about how much the Jewish interviews carried out by the author; private fam‐ communities differed from national (or regional) ily archives and ego-documents; Jewish communi‐ realities extremely hard to gauge: for example, re‐ ty archives in several different 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 significantly 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 preunification 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 unification (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) pacifically, 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 influence 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 confidence, while chapter 8 focuses on cist allegiance, in fact, Klein is notably uncertain how and why Italian Jews, as part of the effort 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 fulfill this promise. Here is a fascinating array of human decency in the Italian national character.
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