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Michele Sarfatti. The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution. Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 2006. Pp. vii + 419.
"The Jews of Italy," declared Mussolini in an article printed in the New York Times on 25 June 1936, "have had, presently have, and will continue to have the same treatment as any other Italian citizen, and [?] there is no place in my mind for any form of racial or religious discrimination'"(120). Mussolini's respect for the foreign press is one of many attributes that differentiate him from his German allies. And his supposed 'honesty' has, in many ways, paid off. Even today, many students and scholars of Italian fascism adopt the stance that Mussolini himself put forward regarding his benevolent treatment of Italy's Jews.
There is a stark difference, however, between the images that Mussolini projected of himself abroad and the facts that occurred on the ground. Michele Sarfatti's The Jews in Mussolini's Italy challenges the perception of Mussolini as a largely benign leader who was simply pressured by Hitler to pass the racial laws that circumscribed the lives of Italy's Jews. Indeed, Sarfatti not only examines documentation that suggests that Rome was capable of acting independently of Berlin; Sarfatti also disputes the argument that Mussolini, while caving in to Nazi Germany by passing the racial laws, demonstrated his ambivalence for these racial tactics by not following up on arrests or implementing deportations as forcefully as he might have. Thus, Sarfatti suggests that many conclusions that scholars have formed of Mussolini are the result of their having accepted the dictator's own declarations, rather than interrogating the dictator's public self-image. One of the most powerful weapons in Sarfatti's arsenal is the careful inspection of archival material that documents attacks on Jewish rights, equality, and life from 1922 to 1945. Sarfatti uses these records to demonstrate that Mussolini was an aggressive and manipulative leader steeped in anti-Semitism. Indeed, his powers as an orator and statesman continue to serve him in that they have contributed to the positive light in which revisionists attempt to portray him.
Sarfatti's text, adeptly translated into English by John and Anne C. Tedeschi, is an expanded version of the original Italian (published in 2000 by Einaudi). The first two chapters provide a...