The inevitable part of historiography is cherry-picking the good from the bad, and Italy is not an exception.

When we think of Italy and its role in the Second World War, we do not equate it with the role it played in Holocaust. The Italian state and society has created the Second World War culture of remembrance with a focus on the study of Resistance while completely neglecting the study of Fascism. And it is precisely that these commonly mistaken notions of Italy’s complicity in the Holocaust or for some lack thereof that Professor Simon Levis Sullam explored in his book “The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy.”

In the introduction of the book David I. Kertzer has written: “An important part of Italians’ ability to distance themselves from this past has been the creation of the myth of the “good Italian.” Levis Sullam shows that this myth was constructed very early, beginning in the final months of the war, as Italians quickly remade their identities to cast themselves on the side of the war’s victors. In this convenient narrative, Italians had only positive feelings for their Jewish fellow citizens. All of the horrible things done to the Jews were the work of the evil Germans, notwithstanding the Italians’ own heroic efforts to protect them.”

Simon Levis Sullam is a Professor of Contemporary History at the University Ca’ Foscari Venice, Italy. He taught modern European history and Jewish history at Venice – Ca’ Foscari, Berkeley and Oxford. He holds a PhD in European Social History from Ca’ Foscari and his fields of interest include the history of ideas and culture in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascism; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust; the history of historiography; questions of historical method.

More information: https://www.unive.it/data/people/5590762

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