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II • BLOODLESS TORTURE: THE BOOKS OF THE ROMAN GHETTO UNDER THE NAZI OCCUPATION Stanislao G. Pugliese From days immemorial books played an important, even vital role in our nation’s life. Rightly we were considered in the Diaspora the people of the book when the book served as a loyal companion of our nation. Librarian, Sholem Aleichem Library, Radomsko, Poland WHEN I began research into the fate of the books of the Roman ghetto under the Nazi occupation, I had in mind the line from John Milton’s Areopagitica of : “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.” Or perhaps—as another epigraph for the essay—Heinrich Heine’s thought in  that “wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” For the more contemporary-minded, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit  might seem appropriate. Burned into our collective consciousness are the searing images of Nazi bonfires consuming—with the twin scourges of fire and hatred—the intellectual patrimony of an entire civilization: from the “decadent” liberals to the “diseased” Jews to the “traitorous” Thomas Mann. For historical precedents, I thought of the burning of the ancient library at Alexandria , the sack of Rome by the Vandals, Savonarola’s “bonfire of the vanities” in Renaissance Florence, and even Umberto Eco’s fictional account of the destruction of a magnificent medieval library in his novel The Name of the Rose. In the winter of , Jewish scholars were already aware of what the Nazi war would mean, at least as far as Jewish material culture was concerned. An article had appeared in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung titled “Books, Books, Books,” which prompted Chaim Aron Kaplan to note in his diary the ironic similarity between the Germans and the Jews: We are dealing with a nation of high culture, with a “people of the Book.” . . . The Germans have simply gone crazy for one thing—books. . . . Germany has become a madhouse for books. Say what you will, I fear such people! Where plunder is based on an ideology, on a world outlook which in essence is spiritual, it cannot be equaled in strength and durability. . . . The Nazi has robbed us not only of our material possessions, but also of our good name as “the people of the Book.”1 In Turin, a city with a Jewish population of little more than , in , Jewish books were burned—by Italian Fascists. Before the Nazis ever set foot in occupied Italy, the Fascists of Turin forced their way into the Jewish Community Library, seized much of the collection, and used it to feed a great bonfire in the Piazza Carlina.2 Yet the story of the books of the Roman ghetto reveals that the two libraries—that of the Synagogue and that of the Rabbinical College—were not burned; another fate awaited them. Their story is part of the crime against Rome’s Jewish community that began with the Nazi occupation of Rome in July of , only hours after King Victor Emmanuel III had removed Mussolini from office. The Fascist regime had come to power more than two decades earlier, in October , without any trace of official anti-Semitism. Indeed, Italian Jews— as middle-class citizens, not as Jews—supported the regime and were present in the highest echelons of the Fascist hierarchy: Guido Jung as finance minister; Aldo Finzi as undersecretary of the interior. It was not until the Rome–Berlin Axis of  that the anti-Semites within fascism were released from their leashes. In  the Fascist regime passed extensive anti-Semitic legislation; most Gentile Italians, to their credit, did their best to circumvent the new laws. In fact, until the Nazi occupation of Italy, not one Italian Jew was transported to the death camps, even though the Nazi leadership was insistent on this point. In September of , the SS (Schutzstaffel) commander in charge of Rome, Herbert Kappler, summoned the leaders of the Jewish community to his office. He demanded a ransom of fifty kilos of gold, to be paid within thirty-six hours, in exchange for the safety of the Jewish community. On the international gold market in , fifty kilos of gold were worth approximately $,; with , Jews in Rome, a ransom of $. seemed a small price to pay for the life of a person.3 At his trial after the war...

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