1970s

BIAGI: When the Germans rounded up the Jews in Rome there was a commoner who snatched a child from the arms of a Jewish woman and said ‘this is mine’. And there was a street cleaner who quickly took off his jacket, took his broom, put it in the hands of a Jew and saved this life. How did the ‘Aryans’ behave?”

MATILDE FINZI BASSANI: “Well, I must say I don’t like to say how the Aryans behaved, I’m honest. I don’t know, there’s person and person. Clearly there was a very heavy official campaign, but it was also clear that there were, for example, the community authorities who tended to get along with these authorities, who believed they were ingratiating them by following their policy. I remember a maid who said “they are not Christians like the others, after all”, which was their way of saying. Of course, among the youngs there were fanatics. Were these Aryans or ignorant? I would say that they were also somewhat ignorant, in short Aryans and ignorant. Those who were not ignorant or those who relied on feeling I think reacted in a very different way. If we are here, we are because someone has helped us, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We are here for this reason: that there was a basic solidarity.”

MUSSOLINI:“From the height of these thirty centuries of history we can look down with a sovereign contempt to certain doctrines from beyond the Alps, of people who did not know writing, with which to pass on the documents of their lives, in a time when Rome had Caesar, Virgil and Augustus.”

NARRATOR: “This speech by Mussolini dates back to 1934. Four years later, Fascism revises its positions. Here are some images from a film by the famous German director Leni Riefenstahl, who tends to propagate and exalt the myth of the Aryan race. Italian racism was born in Ethiopia with the problem of mixed unions and mixed-breed people. The regime fights these unions. Thus, demographic policy becomes race policy. Anti-Semitism imported from Germany finds a ready soil already. Mussolini wants to erase the impression of copying Hitler. Saying that fascism has imitated someone or something, he says, is simply absurd. But in reality the regime is by now strongly under the influence [lit.: “part of the fief”] of German Nazism. Anti-Semitic German documentaries circulate in our country. Fascism tries to involve the Church and refers to the anti-Semitic tradition of the 19th century, which had also had some space in Catholic circles. The [journal] ‘Catholic civilization’ reacts harshly. Some Catholic voice tries a moderate reaction of racism. There are also cases of yielding to the new racist climate. Father [Agostino] Gemelli, for example, in a speech on January 10 in Bologna, speaks of the Jews as ‘a deicidal people, tragically unfit to live in Italy’, for their blood, he says, and for their religion. But racism arouses a widespread movement of rejection in the Catholic world, as indeed in all public opinion and many hostile pronouncements by the Church. The Pope himself intervenes several times, in an anti-racist speech of 28 July. Mussolini replies on the 30th of the same month: ‘Even in the question of race, we will go straight forward”. Many bishops manifest their position, including [Milan’s archibishop, cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso] Schuster, who in a speech in the Milan Cathedral of November 13 takes a stand against “the racial myth of the twentieth century – these are his words – which sets the history of the world back by two millennia.”

SCOPPOLA: “The sentence we have heard from Cardinal Schuster is revealing. Schuster, we recalled it, had had a rather favorable attitude, of encouragement to the regime. However in the face of racial laws, of racial policy he too detaches himself, assumes a critical attitude. We are now at the crisis of the Catholic consensus to fascism and Mussolini is aware of this. We have an interesting testimony, the one from Ciano – Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Mussolini’s son-in-law – who in his diary notes down precisely, in the course of 1938, the growth, in Mussolini, of this state of mind of resentment towards the Church and Catholics. Here are some excerpts: “8 August. The Duce is very determined – writes Ciano – on the question of race and against Catholic Action”. And then he adds: ‘he repeats to me his theory of Catholicism [as] paganization of Christianity, ‘for this reason I am Catholic and anti-Christian’”, Mussolini supposedly told him. Again, on August 22: ‘If the Pope continues to speak, I will scratch the crust of the Italians and in no time at all I will make them return anticlerical.’ Later, on September 4, another sentence from Mussolini reported by Ciano: “I am in the process of convincing Italians and getting them used to the fact that they can do without another thing: the Vatican’. This is the Mussolini of the last few years, on the eve of the war, in which those moods, those orientations that characterized his formation, his youth are already re-emerging, marked, as is well known, by a clear anti-clericalism and by a basic hostility, I would say, to Christianity itself. At the end of 1938, the situation became more serious, in November, when a discriminatory measure against Jews is adopted by the government. Among other things, the decree of November 17 prohibits mixed marriages between Aryans and Jews. Even the marriages according to the Concordat – i.e. marriages contracted in church with civil effects, as the Concordat precisely provided – can no longer have civil effects, they are not transcribed in the civil status registers. The protest of the Church is very lively, there is an attempt to seek a solution, the attempt fails, the Pope takes an attitude of clear intransigence on this point. The Concordat suffered a wound, a vulnus, as it was said at the time and this expression remained. This vulnus will no longer be healed. But what happens at the base of the Catholic world? We have stuck so far to describing the attitude of the higher ranks and it is interesting to ask ourselves what is felt, what is said at the base of the Catholic world. Because the Church is not only the Pope, it is not only the bishops, there are millions of faithful, there are thousands of priests in Italy. In his novel ‘Pane e vino’ Ignazio Silone has a very beautiful page that offers us the starting point for a reflection on this topic: Don Benedetto, an old anti-fascist priest, is asked to participate in an official fascist ceremony, to bless some flags. Don Benedetto refuses and has these words: ‘I am a poor old man, full of fears and defects. But I am also an old-fashioned Christian and I cannot act against my conscience, believe me’, he replies to his interlocutor. And so we must ask how many ‘Don Benedettos’ there are in Italy at the end of the 1930s. Certainly there are some, there are several – they are growing. Above all, I believe – a precise answer clearly cannot be given – but they are certainly growing. It is growing the number of priests and then soon also of Catholics, of many Catholics who no longer recognize themselves in fascism, in the regime, and precisely in the face of racial legislation and of the racial policy now have an attitude of rejection towards the regime. We can say that the consent to fascism is also in crisis on the Catholic side; Consent existed, it is useless to deny it, history of Italy cannot be understood if it’s not recognized, if it’s not emphasized that fascism enjoyed a relatively broad consent, especially in the period of the war in Ethiopia, as we have seen and we have already pointed out. This consensus enters a crisis at the end of the 1930s, enters into crisis among Catholic circles and in a wider public opinion. Naturally then the crisis of consent will worsen in the following years, with the beginning of the war and the tragic development of the war. Let us return once again to the top of the Church, the position of Pius XI: the Pope is already ill, near the end of his life. What does he think? We are on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Conciliation, on 11 February 1939 the celebrations are being prepared to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Conciliation. Of course, the anniversary makes the unease more acute for this climate of tension that has been created and for the fact that this vulnus is open, this reason for dissent over the Concordat after the introduction of the racial law. The speech that has already been announced and that the Pope will deliver on the anniversary of the pacts is eagerly awaited. And the rumor that circulates in many circles says that the Pope’s speech will be a harsh condemnation of fascism. But the Pope dies the day before the anniversary of the Pacts, the speech will no longer be delivered. Many years later, by the will of John XXIII, a part, some passages of this speech will be published. What had Pius XI thought to say? The released passages contain a very harsh and a very brave denunciation against the distortions of the fascist press and the Pope also denounces the action of the informers, of the spies who act in all circles and who deform the situation through their news, but there is in this speech also – and perhaps above all – a feeling of satisfaction, of exultation for the day he remembers – is the phrase of Pius XI – “God given back to Italy and Italy to God”. And in this sentence, I would say, the religious dimension of Pius XI emerges, his vision of things. Pius XI was a religious Pope. What moves Pius XI is a religious vision, which is then expressed in an attitude of great consistency and moral intransigence as we have seen in more than one circumstance. But there is also, in the attitude of Pius XI, a disproportionate, I would say, trust in the juridical instrument, in the Concordat instrument. There was, as we have seen, the hope of being able to use an authoritarian state for a work of religious restoration. There is a greatness in the figure of this pontiff of a moral and religious nature, [and] there are limits linked to a mentality, to a culture in understanding the reality of the moment. And both of these aspects – magnitude and limitations – I believe that in a historical reconstruction such as the one we have tried, they should be underlined.”

NARRATOR: “Here we are at the Luce newspapers shot on the occasion of the death of Pius XI. Ciano again notes in his diary: “February 10, the Pope is dead. The news leaves the Duce completely indifferent. February 11, the Grand Council suspends the session as a sign of mourning. Starace and Farinacci wouldn’t want to use this formula, I insist and I am supported by Federzoni and Balbo. The Duce, however, is always hostile towards the Church”. The detachment of Catholic public opinion from the regime is accentuated in the following years. The loss of the consent of the Church favors the emergence of a new type of anti-fascism, an anti-fascism of conscience, a moral hostility that is spreading throughout the country. Christian sentiment contributes to the growth of this spontaneous, basic anti-fascism, not tied to political positions. Man’s dignity is offended by the racial persecutions, the participation in the war – opposed by the Church – appears absurd to every honest conscience. The war will soon overwhelm fascism and its leader. The Church continues its journey, the compromise with the regime has undoubtedly marked the mentality of Catholics, but the Christian conscience will nourish new experiences and new commitments. The generous work carried out by the Church in the years of the German occupation in favor of racial political persecution, the participation of Catholics in the resistance will be the preconditions for a new historical season. The former Populars, De Gasperi in the first place, and the minorities of the 1930s will have a new responsibility and the difficult task of guiding the Catholic world in the years of the democratic rebirth.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “(…) prof. Vittorio Giuntella, of the University of Rome, who published a few days ago, I believe, a volume, ‘Nazism and the concentration camps’. Here, I want to ask you this: how did fascism enter this story, what is it that leads fascism to anti-Semitism and from anti-Semitism to total involvement with Hitler’s Germany, with Nazism and therefore to the Holocaust and therefore to these – again I can’t find a word because it is true that ‘bestiality’ is not an adequate word – inhumanities, I don’t know how to say.

VITTORIO E. GIUNTELLA: You see, in Nazism this subhuman condition of the Jew had been theorized. After all, if we re-read the ‘Mein Kampf’, and especially if we re-read it in the complete German edition, we see that this subhuman condition of the Jew is theorized and there is a coherent development, all the way, to the point of extermination. Ultimately this consistency was carried from the moment in which Hitler came to power all the way, to Auschwitz, to the great extermination camps. Not in Italy, in Italy in 1938 the anti-Semitism was invented, it was improvised. The Duce’s trip to Berlin brought this consequence to Italy. If we want to understand this, it is enough to re-read the so-called ‘Manifesto of the Race’, the manifesto that some fascist scientists improvised and presented to the political secretary of the fascist party. It is a ridiculous cover given by scientists and non-scientists – we know the names – to an anti-Semitism that had no roots in Italy and that instead there was a will to create precisely to align Italy with racist and Nazi anti-Semitism. This improvisational anti-Semitism, I would say, negatively affected the public opinion and here began a separation of a large part of Italians from what was fascism.

ARRIGO LEVI: But did Fascism realize what it was doing or not?

VITTORIO GIUNTELLA: You see, it realized. You know that this accusation of improvisation was given by the Osservatore Romano, for example, and the Grand Council of Fascism disdainfully rejected this accusation of improvisation. In reality it was so. Just think that only a few weeks before, I would say, before July 1938 – the Manifesto bears the date of July 25, 1938 -…

ARRIGO LEVI:The first racial laws were a month and a half to two months later

VITTORIO GIUNTELLA: “…Yes, November of ’38. The law, the royal decree, bears the date of November ’38. As I was saying, only a few weeks earlier Mussolini had said that in Italy there was no Jewish question. In 1934 he even said that for the Nazis the Jews were a scapegoat for resolving a dramatic internal situation.

ARRIGO LEVI: But between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, the dictatorship of what was fascism and the point of arrival that was the extermination, the elimination of the Jews by fascism also in its final phase, there is a connection however.

VITTORIO GIUNTELLA: In the phase of the Republic of Salò. Well, there is a connection in this sense: fascism did not theorize because it was a practice, it was a crude practice of violence against opponents, right?

ARRIGO LEVI: Well, there was violence, violence is at the origin.

VITTORIO GIUNTELLA: Of course, fascism is violence, is the imposition of a form of government with violence, implemented through violence. Evidently this was present in fascism but there was no anti-Semitism of this type at the origin. Mussolini had resolutely denied this in his talks with [the German journalist and writer, Emil] Ludwig. Now in 1938 the impression of his trip to Berlin and probably also of the precise requests of the Nazis and Hitler himself led Fascism to improvise an anti-Semitic conscience in Italy. We know what the reaction of the Italian population was. Naturally, you rightly spoke of the second phase of fascism, of fascism after the restoration.

ARRIGO LEVI: After 1943, after the restoration.

VITTORIO GIUNTELLA: “Just look at the notorious points of the Fascist congress in Verona where the Jewish problem is seen for the first time in terms very similar to those of Nazism. The Jew is a stranger to Italian political life, to Italian culture, in time of war he is considered an enemy. This placed the Jew, even the Italian Jew, in the hands of the Germans and we know how, if on the one hand the Italian population collaborated in the rescue of the Jews, on the other the hierarchs of the Nazi Republic and some particular formations of the Fascist Republic of Salò instead collaborated in sending Jews to extermination camps. “

ARRIGO LEVI: “At this point it becomes an Italian story: at this point we have fascism, we have Jews and we have Italy that reacts and responds to this, we can well say it. Italy, that is, the Italians, the masses, who respond in a certain way, which ends up being the Resistance, because that was it. But this reaction of the Italians – because Professor Giuntella remembered; I [Levi] am an Italian Jew, I have experienced it – we all know that in Italy Jews were helped more than elsewhere, much more than elsewhere. The Jews felt persecuted by the fascists, not by the Italians. This was a common enough feeling to be evidently true. Now, why? This happens in this global panorama of Europe under Nazism, in which this anti-human ideology which was anti-Semitism is proposed – of which antisemitism is a part, because Muslims were massacred in the same way, the gypsies, there were massacres of millions and millions of people who were not Jews but for the same ideological bestiality of Nazism –. Now, to some extent Italy responds and reacts – and resists – to this proposal of a way of seeing life, of a way of seeing society, of a way of seeing people. What was there in Italian society – and the episodes again at this point become many, including priests, nuns, convents who have saved people, ordinary people, peasants – what was there in Italian society at a certain moment that causes this reaction.
Here I asked an old friend of mine, Stuart Hood, a well-known English writer, Stuart Hood, to tell me a story that runs parallel to that, but in order to explain, to enlighten, to clarify what Italy was and how the Italians responded (beyond this discourse on Salò, which is a part of history, there it’s another part). The parallel story that Hood tells us is the story of the escaped Allied prisoners, which is also a singular story, unique in Italy, there were no cases of this kind in the rest of occupied Europe. Thousands and thousands of English prisoners who were in prison camps in various parts of Italy that in the moment in ’43 when fascism fell, the camps break, they go out and flee and remain – here I don’t want to tell about it myself – and they are saved. How, in which way and why?”

STUART HOOD: “So, I found myself among the Italian peasants and I was safe everywhere. I knew that every evening I could knock on the door of a farm.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “In which region of Italy?”

STUART HOOD: “In Emilia, the high Emilian-Tuscan Apennines and then the Sienese, the Chianti area above all. And you could go to any farmer and be sure that you could find accommodation – perhaps in the stable with the oxen -, you could find food and then you could be sure not to be reported.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “Well, how could you be sure, how did you know, because the first time you knocked on a door how could you know, you didn’t know.”

STUART HOOD: “The first few times it was a risk that you took, right? But afterwards one knew with certainty that he could go there, at the farmers. With the middle classes it was more difficult, you never knew, especially with the village teachers, who were a bit fascist.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “There you could run into fascists.”

STUART HOOD: “Right. So how can this phenomenon be explained? I would say that there are three fundamental reasons: first of all what can be defined as a very deep sense of human solidarity, based on a very hard experience of life, a sense of solidarity that I have often heard formulated with the words ‘you are all children of a mother’. A sense of humanity; then, secondly, a certain – how to say – categorical imperative, that food must be given to the hungry, housing for the homeless, and that something must be done for the miserable of the world. Because as they said, ‘we have spouses, children somewhere down there – as they said – in Africa – but what will this Africa be?, they told me – and who knows how they are. Then you guys have to eat, stay here, sleep and then go away’; thirdly, there was anti-fascism. Therefore, anti-fascism is a rather complicated thing. I would say that there are several kinds of anti-fascism. First of all there was a resentment from the peasants against the central power, any central power. So the fascist regime as a central power had taken away from those families the beautiful copper pots, the golden rings, the fathers, the children, the grandchildren. For them this was enough, whoever does this is our enemy. And whoever is against that regime is our friend. Then there was a more distinctly political anti-fascism, that is, there were peasants who gave us accommodation, then when I got in touch with the partisans there were others who knew that I was armed for example, they were in danger but they didn’t say anything.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “In danger because they too risked being shot, this must be said.”

STUART HOOD: “Then there were the political peasants, let’s say, who took part in partisan actions and who gave us very, very sensitive and very important support. And for those various reasons I am here and I am alive and I can also say thanks to the Italian farmer.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “This is a story. At this point the story becomes the story of the Resistance, in a certain sense, because the story of the persecution of the Jews converges here, the Resistance to this ideology. But I would like to underline how much there is of conscious ideology of culture in these peasants who contrast … please, professor Toaff.”

ELIO TOAFF: “That’s what I meant to say. That the element that resisted fascism politically was not that of the ruling class, because by now they had all been absorbed by the regime. There were the intellectuals who had stayed out for anti-fascism and then there were the people. The one who fought fascism with the most effective weapon, that is, with the joke. First, with the joke and then with the weapons, but we got to the weapons through the joke. Because the joke was deadly, because it really touched on what were all the weak points of fascism. And then, as my predecessor rightly said, there were the people who were fascists because they had made them be. Because all the rural housewives we saw in the parades and all the peasants who went to the demonstrations, if there was one [of them who was really a] fascist… I remember Livorno, I am from Livorno, I spent my youth in Livorno, a city where there was not one fascist. But they were all enrolled [to the Party]. But [real fascists] were a very small percentage of them, so few that in certain streets the fascists never dared passing by. So, the Resistance comes from this, from a politics of people who, had been marginalized, or who had remained somewhat neutralized and then also came from that part of the people who had a political background, which had origins. The children of the socialists were socialists, I have lived in my family such cases: my father-in-law had to leave Italy and flee, otherwise they would have killed him because he was a socialist.”

ARRIGO LEVI: “It is a very complex story because there was a passage that would deserve to be taken up and deepened when you say ‘there were no fascists but they were all registered’, being registered really meant having a great responsibility because then in the end, if we have arrived at where we have arrived, it is also because they were all registered. However this is the reality as complex as it was, now we are not able to bring the story forward here, it is a fact in Italian history, of the thousands of cases of aid given from person to person, like we have heard it told from Hood, we could have brought many people here, many Jews who could tell the same, or many such stories in such families. We have had them, we have lived them, we know that this is what allowed the Italian Jews to say, afterwards: ‘we have been persecuted by the fascists and not by the Italians’. This is actually the situation. Now the story was this in short and I think we have tried to tell how it came from fascism to anti-Semitism. (…)”