Eighty years ago today, a little known dispute between the Axis powers came to a head when the Royal Italian Army occupying southern France refused to turn over thousands of French and foreign Jews to their German ally.
The Italians had been occupying a section of the French Riviera and Alpine foothills since November, 1942. Some 16,000 French Jews lived there and thousands of foreign Jews streamed in when word spread that Italians had replaced Vichy French authorities. One German report in 1943 estimated 50,000 Jews in the Italian zone, which one Gestapo official labeled “the Promised Land” for Jewish refugees. Word spread across occupied Europe how humane the Italian Army and even Fascist officials were to Jewish refugees. They didn’t require Jews to wear Stars of David or have “J” stamped on their identity papers.
The Vichy French had been cooperating with the Germans in deporting Jews to their deaths. Until France was liberated in 1944 some 77,000 Jews living on French territory were shipped to concentration camps or died in detention on French soil. One third of these victims were French citizens. Jews were safe in Italian military zones in France and the Balkans until Mussolini was ousted and Italy surrendered in September, 1943. The Duce was made aware of Nazi atrocities by his generals and allowed them to resist German interference in Italian military zones, a policy that stymied Hitler’s “Final Solution”.
Nazi hierarchy decided to circumvent the Italian generals and go straight to Mussolini. The Duce activated the notorious Italian bureaucracy and appointed a “Commissar for Jewish Affairs” named Guido Lospinoso to investigate the French haven. Strangely, the Germans – including Adolf Eichmann who testified so at his Israeli trial in 1962 – were never able to meet with Lospinoso or find out where he was. Meanwhile, ‘somebody’ in the Italian zone was moving Jews from the coast to luxury resorts in the Alpine foothills. One Gestapo official believed there was no Lospinoso but rather an Italian Jewish banker (imagine!) named Angelo Donati who was conning the Germans.
But all was for naught when Italy surrendered on September 8, 1943 and the Italian Army disintegrated, leaving Jewish refugees without protection.
The story of Italian resistance to the Final Solution has been buried in popular history in many respects because of the Fascist connection – no historian wants to be an apologist for Mussolini. Also, stories of individual heroics in saving Jews is easier for the public to grasp. Nazi factory owner Osker Schlindler, Swedish architect Raoul Wallenburg, and the Japanese and Portuguese diplomats who falsified visas to help Jews escape all redeem human nature. Even the Danes lauded for an escape pipeline for Jews had other motives. According to the Holocaust authority Yad Vashem “Danish scholars have shown that in many cases big sums of money were paid to the seamen who brought the Jews across to Sweden.”
Italians marched to a different drum. General Giuseppe Amico who commanded a district in the Balkans refused outright to turn his Jewish refugees over the Germans because it was “…against the honor of the Italian Army.” His refusal was reported to Heinrich Himmler and with Italy’s surrender General Amico was captured by the SS and shot.
Why this Italian morality and so many examples of personal heroism remain a ’secret history’ is perplexing. Much like La Storia Segreta – the persecution of Italian Americans in 1942 by the Roosevelt Administration, caught in the same infamous dragnet as the Japanese internment – the Italic people do not seem worthy of historical justice.
I found this essay written by Ivo Herzer published by the Catholic University Press in 1994 that recounts his personal experience with the Italian Army in the Balkans:
“I was among the 5,000 Croatian Jews, who managed to reach the Italian-occupied zone in Dalmatia.” He describes how they were saved from the “jaws of death” and how welcoming the Italians were, even inviting them to a military entertainment show. “As the band struck up the Italian national anthem and all rose, I saw tears in my father’s eyes. He whispered to me, ‘If we survive the war we must never forget how the Italians saved Jews.’” He goes on:
“I still have the school reports, two pieces of yellowing paper, reminding me that under the Italian flag Jewish children studied history and Latin, philosophy and mathematics, while the Nazis and their accomplices were murdering hundreds of thousands of Jewish children, unopposed by all of Europe.”
Enough said. -JLM
And those Jewish refugees lucky enough to reach an internment camp in Calabria were able to survive the war years and relocate to 3rd nations after the war….those were horrible and unimaginable times…the historian in me knows these things are never black-and-white …..also little understood was Mussolini’s support for Zionist activities in Palestine to try to slow down British expansion in the Middle East during the 1930s. To a large extent, all the Monday morning quarterbacking about WW I and the western front overlooked British and French expansion into the middle eastern oil countries. We are still reeling from those very cynical times…tragically if we can’t even discuss these matters we are doomed to repeat them….its no accident the middle east is such a mess today.
Hello JLM
I read with interest your article, Other Storia Segreta, and wondered how many unclaimed Jewish Italian family properties in Italy still remain on record in the Italian Government data base in the names of those deceased long ago. These properties should have passed to the next generation(s) living outside of Italy. The heirs living abroad are “in the dark”
Jewish Italian descendants may not be “in the dark” considering such organizations as the Primo Levi Center in Manhattan or the various Holocaust groups around the world exist for such matters. I’m sure the Jewish community has provided all the tools and information to restore unclaimed property.
Thank you, John, for citing the Primo Levi Center and many left leaning establishments who endeavor for 3 decades to denigrate Italy’s contributions by emphasizing the 1938 Racial Laws and equating the Nazi occupation of Northern Italy to Latvia. There were many amazing stories in that time who earned honors at Yad Vashem just to mention a few Padre Ruffino and the Bishop of Assisi. No discussion of this topic is complete without the rescues in Greece and the Sephardic community of Thessaloniki by Righteous Gentile diplomat Guelfo Zamboni….the following is from Wiki…In 1992, the State of Israel awarded Guelfo Zamboni with the title of “Righteous among the Nations”, which is awarded to those who saved Jews during the Holocaust at personal risk to themselves and who acted for purely altruistic reasons. He was thus awarded a place in Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem. In 2002, Ehud Gol, the Israeli Ambassador in Italy, traveled to Santa Sofia to place a stone in Zamboni’s memory.
Guelfo Zamboni never asked for recognition for his aid and remained quite unknown in Italy until the eve of his 95th birthday (1992), when he gave his first interview after being awarded the title of “Righteous among the Nations”. In 2008, the Italian Embassy in Athens published the book Ebrei di Salonicco 1943, i documenti dell’umanità italiana, edited by Antonio Ferrari (Corriere della Sera), Alessandra Coppola (University of Padua), and Jannis Chrisafis (a Greek journalist). This book reports the telex sent to Rome by Zamboni. His story also inspired the theatrical work Salonicco ’43 by Ferdinando Ceriani, Gian Paolo Cavarai and Antonio Ferrari, previewed at the University of Tel Aviv on 23 September 2008 during a celebratory evening organized by the Italian Cultural Institute.
I am very proud of this record. I hope Italian morality never changes.
There are so many more examples, and I hope it will come to light.
One of our members, an Italian Jew, has told us a compelling story.
Her family was saved by the Italians in their town.