Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism by Shira Klein (review)

Shira Klein begins her ambitious new project with an important set of questions: how did the Jews of Italy participate in the creation of the notion of Italiani brava gente (Italians, good people), a myth that served both to bolster the moral identity of non-Jewish Italians after World War II and to exculpate them from responsibility for the grim fate of many Italian Jews? If Italian Jews participated in the creation of this myth, why did they do so, and what are the implications for the identity of Jewish Italians in relation to the post-Emancipation period? Klein asks these questions, and many more, about the civic and political status of Jews in Italy and also about what happened to the communities that emigrated. Her book is a richly detailed and meticulously researched work that explores these questions deeply. Her other topics include a hard look at how we understand the Holocaust in Italy: Who were its perpetrators and why? Who were the Jews of Italy during the fascist era and before, and who are they today?

In her introduction, Klein sets forth the terms of her ambitious study. In the first two chapters, she explores the history of Jewish integration after the Unification in 1860–1861 and examines the reasons for the strong Jewish patriotism that developed during this time, a civic identity that fostered denial of the extreme difficulties Italian Jews had under the later fascist regime. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the status of Jews under fascism, the effect of the Racial Laws of 1938–1939, and the Shoah in Italy. This part of the book includes an analysis of the important work that has been published in the past twenty to thirty years that takes much closer look at the Shoah in Italy and especially at its perpetrators. Historians such as Giorgio Fabre, Liliana Picciotto, Susan Zuccotti, and Michele Sarfatti, among others, have done crucial work to explode some of the postwar myths about the role of the fascists during the roundups of Italian Jews between 1943 and 1945, as well as exploring the veracity of the Italiani brava gente myth. But there is another myth, or something closely approaching one, that Klein wants to explore, and this is the political affiliation of Jews in Italy during fascism. Just as the myth of Italiani brava gente was perpetrated after the war to protect the cultural identity of all things Italian from the taint of fascism through denying the involvement of most Italians in the regime, the notion that Italian Jews might also have been involved in fascism was also underplayed. Giorgio Bassani in his early fiction makes it clear that fascism appealed to middle-class Jews in Ferrara, but his assertions were largely ignored in the postwar recreation of Italian identity that embraced denial of the past. In her assessment of the postwar representation of Italy, Klein connects some important dots: she sees these exculpatory impulses as extending to the colonial period as well.

The second half of the book covers Italian Jews who moved abroad, to the United States and to Palestine before the creation of Israel. The chapter on Italian Jews in the United States is one of the most original and interesting, and offers a well-balanced discussion of their political alliances as well as their reception as immigrants. The questions that are raised by Klein’s study are fascinating and could use further exploration; for example, how do we distinguish between Italian non-Jews and Italian Jews in the United States, if their reactions to fascism are similar? If non-Jewish Italians didn’t want their cultural identity threatened by fascism, why should Italian Jews be any different? Is it their Italian identity that dictates their reactions or their Jewishness? She implicitly raises questions about what constitutes these forms of cultural identity: are these fungible categories?

Not all readers will agree with Klein’s conclusions regarding the alliance between...