ITALY AND COMRADES OF HEBREW RELIGION

Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1993

AN ARMY OF SCHINDLERS FROM ITALY

BY DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
JOURNAL EDITORIAL WRITER

Oskar Schindler, flawed hero of Steven Spielberg’s monumental film, “Schindler’s List,” came
to Poland a profiteer and ended up a rescuer of many hundreds of Jewish lives. His story’s entry
into the world, via Mr. Spielberg’s justly celebrated film, calls to mind a number of other
unlikely rescuers of whose exploits little has been heard, however much they are known to
historians.
I have in mind, namely Hitler’s allies, the Italians, whose government ministries and army and
highest political circles moved heaven and earth to see to it that not a single Jew was deported
from Italy. They schemed, they plotted, they resorted to the wiliest of strategies and delaying
efforts -- including the invention of the most wonderful complicated “census-taking” known to
man -- to ensure that no Jews under their governance fell into German hands. Not for nothing
does the history of these plots sometimes read like farce.
Not only would the Italian government -- reflecting the popular attitude of the citizenry at large
-- resist deportation, its army and consuls undertook extraordinary efforts to rescue Jews in their
zones of occupation. As an Axis partner, Italy’s forces occupied a large sector of Greece, part of
Yugoslavia, and eight sectors of southeastern France, including Nice.
The attitude of the occupying Italians with regard to Germany’s extermination plans for the
Jews was made immediately clear to the great distress and confusion of the Germans and their
French allies. For, as soon as the Vichy government rounded up Jews for arrest and deportation,
the Italians military and foreign ministry demanded -- and obtained -- a stop to the arrests and
deportations.
In Annecy, the French police, who had rounded up a trainload of Jews for deportation, found
themselves looking at the barrels of guns trained on them by soldiers of the Italian Fourth Army
In Greece, the Italian consuls and military - witness to the brutal deportations taking place
before their eyes -- busied themselves handing out phony certificates of “Italian nationality” to
the hunted Jews.
In Nice, the Italian commandant stationed carabinieri outside the Jewish communal center and
synagogue to make certain that Vichy police could not enter to make arrests.
What there was in the character of the Italians that made their resistance to mass murder so
implacable, so different from that of the Vichy French, is a question we may ponder -- and one
for whose existence we may be grateful.

FASCISM AND COMRADES OF HEBREW RELIGION

It is useless to deny that in the national-popular universe there exists different opinions both on
the question of present Israel or on the Jewish Italian world or, better said, on Italians of
Hebrew religion.
The Jews in our national territory have never been actually persecuted by Italians who in the
vast majority of cases always helped them and hid them at risk of their own life and by often
paying with dire consequences.
And we have numerous examples of soldiers, officers, officials, and comrades of the Militia,
Police, and Carabinieri who defended them and removed them from the furious and murderous
irrationality of German killers.
And we have heroes like Perlasca, comrade of the Spanish war and sent to the East, a Fascist
from the start, who with his incredible effort, saved thousands to the point that he, a Fascist,
was honored in Israel as “ Righteous Among Gentiles”.
It is true that Italy, because of its alliance with Hitler, produced the most ridiculous “Race
Manifest” but never with the terrible consequences as in Germany where the infamous
“Nuremberg Laws” allowed every possible abuse on harmless people who were at the mercy of
the Gestapo.
Is there still resentment and suspicion from the Italian Right against the Jews?
No, there is a rage of a different nature and an irrational pressure of a minority that directs over
them traditional targets and divergent frustrations not bound to a coherent political train of
thought and to adult and mature behavior.
How many ties there are between the Fascism and the Comrades of Hebrew religion?
Many, even though both the Right and the national and international Hebrew community have
willingly ignored them because of that absurd policy of a partly historic revisionism.
There was a great number of Italian Jews who supported the ascend of “Il Duce Mussolini”,
five of them were among the 119 who founded the Italian Fascism Corps at San Sepolcro
Square in Milan on the 23rd of March 1919 and Cesare Goldmann was responsible for
organizing the event.
Among the “Fascists Martyrs” who died in the conflict between 1919 and 1922, three were the
Comrades of Hebrew religion, namely D. Senigaglia , G. Balaffi, and B. Mondolfo and 746
Italians of Hebrew religion in 1923 were enrolled in the Fascist party while more than 300
were alongside Il Duce in the famous “ March to Rome”.
And this without counting the immense economic contribution that many of them gave to the
newborn Fascist party and to the important friends of Mussolini.
Aldo Finzi, a Comrade of Hebrew religion, was the pilot who flew over Fiume together with G.
Dannunzio and was one of the nine elected in 1921 as Congressman and later became Vice-
Secretary at the Interior Ministry and a member of the Great Council.
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Dante Almansi was second in command to the police chief De Bona and Guido Jung was
Finance Ministrer from 1932 to 1935.
Maurizio Rava was Vice-Governor of Libya, Governor of Somalia and a General of the Fascist
Militia.
Renzo Ravenna was a very personal friend of Italo Balbo, a very first member of the Fascist
squad and for 15 years a Ferrara Podesta (Mayor).
Ugo Foa was awarded decorations many times for Militia Valor during the Great War, a lawyer,
and among the very first enrolled in the Fascist Party was very important Official until 1939.
And did you know that the first Dean of the University of Rome was Giorgio Del Vecchio a
Comrade of Hebrew religion?
And what can we say of Margherita Sarfati, lover of il Duce before Claretta Petacci, publisher
assistant to the news paper “ Popolo D’Italia” and Co- Editor of the “Gerarchia” (Hierarchy),
the ideological magazine of the Regime.
Aside from these cases, from 1929 to 1935 there were 4920 Comrades of Hebrew religion
accepted into the party and the exact percent (10%) of the Italian Hebrew population of that
time and the same as those enrolled to the Party in relation to the global population.
And this until the “Arian” blunder.
It is necessary to think and reflect on history itself without denying the evidence of the mistakes
made and in the hope of arriving at what J. Evola defined as “The true awareness of the reality”
in order to reach moral and internal fulfillment.
Francesco Zero