The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy

by Simon Levis Sullam, David I. Kertzer (Foreword by), Oona Smyth (Translator), Claudia Patane (Translator)

Overview

A gripping revisionist history that shows how ordinary Italians played a central role in the genocide of Italian Jews during the Second World War

In this brief history of Italy's role in the Holocaust, Simon Levis Sullam presents an unforgettable account of how ordinary Italians actively participated in the deportation of Italy's Jews between 1943 and 1945. While most historians have long described Italians as relatively protective of Jews during this time, The Italian Executioners tells a very different story, recounting in vivid detail the shocking events of a period during which Italians set in motion almost half the arrests that sent their Jewish compatriots to Auschwitz. With a historian's rigor and a novelist's gift for scene-setting, Levis Sullam dismantles the seductive myth of the "good Italians" who sheltered Jews from harm. In collaboration with the Nazis, and with different degrees of involvement, the Italians were guilty of genocide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691209203
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2020
Pages:	202
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Simon Levis Sullam is associate professor of modern history at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Twitter @levissullam

Table of Contents

Foreword David I. Kertzer vii

Prologue An Evening in 1943 1

1 The Ideological Context of Genocide 9

2 The Dynamics of Genocide: Interpreting Actions, Motivations, and Contexts 29

3 The Beginning of the Persecutions 59

4 The Seizure of Jewish Property 67

5 December 1943: Arrests and Deportations from Venice 76

6 Hunting Down Jews in Florence 92

7 At the Border: Jews on the Run 101

8 A City without Jews: Brescia 109

9 Informing 118

Conclusion Amnesties, Repression, and Oblivion 131

Acknowledgments 143

Notes 145

Glossary 175

Index 179

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In this thoroughly researched and authoritative book, Simon Levis Sullam describes the murderous anti-Jewish policy of the Italian state from 1943 to 1945 and the widespread amnesia that followed the war.”—Saul Friedländer, University of California, Los Angeles

“This nuanced, fine-grained history provides detailed evidence of how Italians collaborated with the Nazis in the deportation of Jews from Italy. The Italian Executioners makes an important contribution to dismantling the idea of italiani brava gente—the ‘good Italians’ who presumably were less eager to collaborate than their French counterparts. Levis Sullam vividly describes how a whole network of Italians—from Fascist officials and police to bus drivers and next-door neighbors—participated in the genocide of Jews.”—Barbara Spackman, University of California, Berkeley

“Combining trenchant writing and scholarly rigor, The Italian Executioners is a brilliant exposure of how Italians were not always the ‘nice people’ of the brava gente myth. One of the many virtues of Levis Sullam’s fine book is its accounts of such places as Venice and Florence, where it is time to accept that there is past darkness to go with all the light.”—Richard J. B. Bosworth, author of Mussolini’s Italy

“If the myth of Italy as an innocent state and of Italians as “good people” (brava gente) lives on, it is in part because Simon Levis Sullam’s book on the Italian executioners has yet to be absorbed, or accepted, by a country still haunted by the specter of Fascism and intent on burying its awkward past. English-language readers will gratefully welcome, as history and warning, this fine new translation of Levis Sullam’s work.”—Kevin Madigan, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"A tight, focused history. . . . Stories of individuals rescuing Jews fill popular histories of that period, but Sullam's fresh, pointed research makes it depressingly clear that most Italians kept quiet and officials followed orders."

Kirkus

"An illuminating addition to Holocaust history."

Publishers Weekly

One of the Best Jewish Books of 2018 (Howard Freedman, Jewish News of Northern California)

"[A] devastating historiographical counterblast. . . . The picture Levis Sullam paints is layered and locally inflected, rich with regional variation and human stories. . . . The result is an important, proportionate, by turns angry and moving corrective: a call to complete the picture of Italy’s Holocaust, to set alongside the stories of witnesses and righteous rescuers, the portraits of the perpetrators."—-Robert Gordon, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

"[A] vigorously revisionist history."

The Economist

"Although this is a relatively short book of 142 pages of text, author Simon Levis Sullam has provided enough research, data and accounts to put the lie to the idea of the ‘good Italians,’ though surely there were some, and has produced a serious indictment and revisionist history of Italy’s collaboration with Germany in committing genocide."

New York Journal of Books