I mean, what if they're just good people?

So, today's post is geared toward those who could not make it to my presentation - therefore, if you were there, feel free to skip straight to the pictures (although, I suppose you would also know what I looked like, seeing as you were present, therefore, I give you permission to stop all reading of this post right now). It's rather academic today, because I'm feeling a need to sum up all the academia of the past few months/year. Come back Wednesday for a more fun / sentimental / final discussion of major honors.

Excited about large documents and finished presentations

"Discarded Memories: 
The Rescuer of Jews in the Self-Acquitting Myth of the Italiani Brava Gente"

For many the words “Italy” and “Holocaust” bear no connection—“Holocaust” often conjures up images of cattle cars, emaciated prisoners, and gas chambers, while “Italy” brings to mind opera, the mafia, and spaghetti. Yet during the Holocaust, through Nazi and fascist collaboration, 15 percent of Italian Jews were killed. The relatively high survival rate, second only to Denmark among occupied countries, ensures to some extent a more positive public opinion. Many people have seen the film La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) and some have read Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz, but even these popular references do not deal directly with Italy, as the heart of the stories take place elsewhere. Why then, with her high numbers of rescue, is Italy so reluctant to share her story?

My paper looks at the ways to answer this question that directly related to rescuers in the immediate postwar period, but can offer some helpful insight into Italy’s reaction to the Holocaust today, which I will explore minimally at the end. I present two arguments in my paper: first, that immediately following the war, anti-fascist political leaders, in an effort to create a new national identity, utilized the image of the rescuer of Jews to stand for the goodness of all Italians. Second, once this new identity was secured, politicians, the Catholic Church, Jews and rescuers themselves subsequently “forgot” the rescuer’s role in this myth of the good Italian.

To do this, the paper is divided chronologically, beginning with the unification of Italy in the nineteenth-century, which gives a context to the rescuer and the history of ideas pertaining to national identity. This continues through the beginning of the war, explaining the social and political context of the country during Fascism and their alliance with Germany. The paper then turns to study Italy as an occupied country under the rule of Nazi-fascism, focusing especially on the lives of Jews and rescuers of Jews in order to show how rescue was possible and offer some potential rationales for why it was done. The final two parts examine the immediate postwar period, 1945 to 1946 and 1947 to 1948, and how this division represents the separation between rescuer as myth and rescuer as forgotten. The first shows how and why the rescuer was utilized as a national identifier through political struggles, films during the time, and the testimonies of Jews themselves. Then, as the country became more secure in politics to some extent and in international opinion, the rescuer becomes forgotten through a web of factors including the impending communist threat and governmental repression, the lack of testimony from rescuers themselves, the ambiguous role of the Vatican during the Holocaust, and the desire of many to deny any Italian culpability.

Family love - such great supporters!

Fellow MH support