Italian Culture and Anti-Semitism

In the Holocaust, the Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Romanians, French, and others helped the Nazis round up the Jews. The Italians, Danes, and Bulgarians did not help the Nazis. However, the Danish and the Bulgarian citizens acted in line with their government; whereas, the Italian citizens acted against their authoritarian government.¹ The fact that the Italians resisted their government showed the fundamental weakness of such regimes.²

Biological anti-Semitism had not taken root in Italy as it had done in Germany and other European countries. Mussolini believed in the idea of a nation over the idea of race, which means that an Italian Jew was an Italian.³ The reason of this lies in the historical oscillations in Italian history. In the past, Jews were restricted mainly to banking-type jobs. This served a significant ideological purpose for the Italians. The general populous saw the Jews as valuable bankers when times were good, and when times were not good, the Jews could be vilified.⁴ Even Mussolini himself valued high Jewish finance, which was one of the reasons that he originally supported the Jews.⁵

The idea that the Jews were a race of people that were non-Italians was no prevalent. Many people saw Jewishness a private affair.⁶ This lead to the assimilation of the Jews into mainstream Italian society, even if they were never fully accepted. In 1910, Luigi Luzzati became the prime minister of Italy.⁷ Italy was the only European country to give such a position to a Jew during this time period.

In general, Italians viewed anti-Semitism to be something that was brought about by the behavior of the Jews.⁸ Despite the lack of individualism behind this, this fact laid the foundation for Italy's actions during the Holocaust. Italian society, when in economic straights, could easily blame the Jews and become anti-Semitic, all the while claiming that it is because of the Jews' behavior. When the economy was good, however, Jews were valued members of Italian society. This strong ideology, while still prejudice, made it so that Italy never formed an idea of biological racism toward Jews like Germany did.⁹

This fact enabled Italians to resist the idea of biological racism when, in 1938, the Italian government took steps to promote it. At this time, the government also passed restrictive laws against the Jews, but the lower ranks of the Italian government and even the individual citizens did not work to enforce these laws the way that other countries' governments and citizens did. ¹⁰

Before 1938, Mussolini supported the Jews. He openly condemned the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Kurt Ludecke from Germany attempted to sway Mussolini on the issue of the Jews during the early period of Fascism.¹¹ When this did not work, Ludecke attempted to sway the people of Italy by writing a series of articles that highlighted Hitler's goals, specifically in regard to the Jews. However, the general Italian populace did not produce the sympathy and support that Ludecke was looking for.¹² The idea that Italians simply did not have anti-Semitism as an option simply was not true; when presented with the options, the majority of Italian citizens rejected the idea of biological racism.

Before the Holocaust, there was violence against the Jews in other countries. In Russia, before World War I, the progroms appeared. The progroms included the raping, beating, and killing of Jewish Russians, and the government did nothing to stop them. In some cases, the police even participated in these violent acts. Both Jews and Christians in Italy spoke out vehemently against this treatment of the Jews.¹³ The fact that non-Jewish Italians were interested in helping non-Italian Jews was important, as it points to the lack of ideology within Italy. Furthermore, the identity of a nation did not prevent the Italians from being outraged by the violent actions in other countries.

This contrasts remarkably with the Bulgarians, who protected Bulgarian Jews but rounded up non-Bulgarian Jews for the Nazis.¹⁴ Even in the other countries that protected Jews from the Nazis, the help was only bound to fellow citizens. Meanwhile, Italy sought to help Jews in other countries, especially during the war time. They tried to help prevent the exterminations that took place in Croatia as well as interfered with the Nazi efforts in southern Greece and in the Maritime Alps in France.¹⁵ The idea that Italians protected the Jews simply because they were other Italians was simply not enough to explain why this took place.

It is true that Mussolini was the leader of the Fascist Party, so the laws he made and the ideas he spread had a lot of weight. His initial desire to incorporate the Jews into Fascism and Italian society as a whole perhaps laid the foundation for his inability to turn the majority of Italian society against the Jewish population after 1938. It was not the government then that helped the Jews, but rather individuals and groups that were lower along the political and social latter.

The majority of the help came from lower-level civil servants in Italy. Many of these people had probably never before seen a Jew in their lives, but they were also unaffected by the governments now anti-Semitic propaganda.¹⁶ In addition, there was substantial Church efforts from the Catholics, although it was mainly from the middle and lower level authorities of the Church, such as bishops and priests.¹⁷ Some Italians were anti-Fascist because they were in economic straits and therefore were more open to helping the Jews against the government.¹⁸ Other educated Italians wanted to help the Jews because they had anti-Fascist political education.¹⁹ The reasons for helping the Jews was not solely hospitable.

On the other hand, some of the Italian border guards collected money to provide for the Jewish women and children so that they could have provisions.²⁰ Three hundred Italians were specifically ordered to be returned to the German frontier by the expulsion act. The Italian prefects "dragged their feet", however, so only fifty to a hundred of those Jews were deported.²¹ Italian army leaders, given the history of the Jews in World War I especially, had a positive view on the Jews and refused to round them up and even attempted some German efforts to do so.²² There are many other situations where individual citizens or lower-ranking people helped Jews to survive under the harsh new regime measures.

By 1942, there was a general dissatisfaction with the Fascist government, and Jewish refugees started to benefit more from individual citizens. In this way, Italy not only exhibited a remarkable lack of biological anti-Semitism, but also proved to be a country wherein the public opinion had a serious impact upon an authoritarian regime.²³ While some citizens perhaps helped out of a sense of compassion toward the Jews as other citizens, it is obvious that the increasing dissatisfaction with the Fascist regime in the latter years (1938 and onward) paralleled the growing help offered to the Jews.

Who helped the Jews? Why did they help them? The idea that the ideology of the nation took precedence over the ideology of race could be seen, but it does not explain why Italians helped non-Italian Jews. It is also clear that the Italians worked for more than humanitarian reasons, although some did. Some helped Jews to work against the government, and some helped the Jews because of enlightenment ideals. The variation of reasons, however, does not stop the fact that Italy was unique in that it helped Jews not of just Italian background, but of any background.

Footnotes

1. Bookbinder 95-96
2. Stille 33
3. Stille 26
4. Stille 23
5. Michaelis 21
6. Rothchild 105
7. Stille 25
8. Stille 29
9. Stille 30
10. Bookbinder 100
11. Michaelis 22
12. Michaelis 23
13. Bookbinder 97
14. Bookbinder 102
15. Bookbinder 102
16. Fargion 112
17. Rothchild 106
18. Fargion 113
19. Fargion 113
20. Voigt 146
21. Voigt 147
22. Fargion 103
23. Voigt 158

For more information on these footnotes, please see the sources.

© Kylie McCormick, Mount Holyoke College 2008.