The fascists and the Jews of Italy

"From 1938 until 1943 - before the German occupation and accompanying Holocaust - Fascist Italy drafted and enforced a comprehensive set of anti-Semitic laws. Notwithstanding later rationalizations, the laws were enforced and administered with a high degree of severity and resulted in serious, and in some cases permanent, damage to the Italian Jewish community. Written from the perspective of an American legal scholar, this book constitutes the first truly comprehensive survey of the Race Laws in the English language. Based on an exhaustive review of Italian legal, administrative, and judicial sources, together with archives of the Italian Jewish community, Professor Michael A. Livingston demonstrates the zeal but also the occasional ambivalence and contradictions with which the Race Laws were applied and assimilated by the Italian legal order and ordinary citizens. Although frequently depressing, the history of the Race Laws also involves numerous examples of personal courage and idealism, and provides a useful and timely study of what happens when otherwise decent people are confronted with an evil and unjust legal order"--Provided by publisher. ; Examines, from the perspective of comparative law history, the fascist Race Laws promulgated in Italy in mid-1938 and augmented in the following years. Dismisses widespread myths on these laws, in particular that they were not fully enforced (the myth of the "good Italian") and that their enactment was inevitable given the political alliance of Italy with Nazi Germany. The enforcement of the Race Laws was strict and, in the course of time, became increasingly harsh, e.g. the number of exemptions given to "meritorious" Jews ("ebrei discriminati") or to people of mixed origin became lower. Nevertheless, there was some difference between the Italian Race Laws of 1938-43 and the anti-Jewish laws in Nazi Germany and even in Vichy France: e.g. in the definition of the "Jew", the Italians emphasized religion and culture over "race" as a factor. There was no "person of mixed race" category as in Germany, and a 50% or 25% "meticcio" was regarded as "Aryan" unless he manifested some cultural indicia of Jewishness. Anti-Jewish violence (insults, beatings, damaging and sacking synagogues) as well as social ostracism of Jews definitely existed in Italy and, in a sense, there was some continuity between the actions of Italian authorities concerning Jews before and after the German occupation in September 1943. Dwells on the application of the Race Laws in the two cities of Ferrara and Turin, as well as on non-Jewish and Jewish responses to the laws. Jewish resistance to the Race Laws followed legal lines, mainly by finding ways to evade them legally. There was no single Italian response to the Race Laws: they varied from those who were indignant toward them to those who regarded them as insufficient. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)