memories
NoonJanuary 27, 2023 – 1:37 pm
The good philo-Semitic and supportive citizen was opposed to the treacherous and obedient fascist to the regime
Of Gabriella Gribaudi
Many years ago, on 27 January 2002, we presented a documentary on Neapolitan Jews who had lived through fascism and the war at the Albergo dei Poveri for the City Day of Remembrance (From the secondary gate. Stories of Jews in Naples , visible online on the site www .memoriedalterritorio.it) The municipality of Naples had helped us with a small loan. Rosa Russo Iervolino, the mayor of the time, particularly sensitive and attentive to the issues of racism and persecution, every year took part in the event which, as the January 27 Association, we organized in the Kodokan gym together with Peppe Marmo, the judo master and founder of the center . There were still members of the Jewish community in Naples who survived that dramatic period. The idea was to make the historical experience concrete, showing at the same time how liberticidal measures and dramatic outcomes all derived from laws and decrees of the fascist state, starting with the exclusion from schools, to continue with the impediment to manage entrepreneurial activities and working in the public sector to end up with the revocation of citizenship of those who had obtained it after 1919 and their consequent expulsion. Due to this decree issued on September 7, 1938, the relatives of one of our witnesses, including the little cousin, were repatriated to Greece, where they were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz where they died.
The interviews, which I myself collected, were also meant to be a way to understand the role of the so-called Aryan inhabitants in all of this. What had friends, neighbors, colleagues, classmates done?
it is interesting to see how the oral testimonies present the complexity of the situation, the contradictions of the moment. The brothers Remo and Tullio Fo favorably recall the police commissioner who allegedly helped their mother to conceal the family’s presence in Vomero, but at the same time they recall the young playmates sons of a fascist, who did not let them get on bicycles, because, being Jews, they would have soiled them. Aldo Sinigallia speaks of the certificates of esteem and solidarity attributed to his family, but also of the nominee to whom they had to make their company, who deceived them. Mario Levi claims that all the Italians around him behaved very well, but then he recalls that at school the children made fun of him and said that Jews had tails. Bice Fo mentions Professor Pane, a well-known intellectual of the time, who crosses the street to give her a balloon, but all the recommendations of the family come to her mind: don’t say you’re Jewish, don’t speak first… Augusto Graziani remembers his expelled father from the university, intent on doing translations to support the family, and the recommendations of his grandmother: better not to say that you are a Jew. Alberto Defez chooses two reference figures to explain the complex situation at the time: his schoolmate, who became a well-known intellectual after the war, who wrote in the Guf newspaper real denunciations against ex-friends who contravened the rules imposed by the laws racial (we have seen these at the cinema…), and, by contrast, the engineer who hired him deliberately transgressing the impositions of the regime. Alberto Bivash, Roberto Piperno, the Fo brothers, Vittorio Gallichi tell us about the class in the Vanvitelli school in which they were gathered as Jewish students. And here too the narrative takes on the trend of contrasts: on the one hand the initiative presented as a way to get Jewish children to go to school by circumventing the rules, but on the other hand all the harassments and humiliations that they had to undergo emerge front: enter from the secondary gate and not from the main one, watch the films in the last row distanced from the others, take the break in closed and reserved spaces, away from the other children…
In returning to that story, memory offers an interpretation; and the counterpoint is the form adopted to narrate them: good but…. As if one wanted to present a non-hostile, almost supportive surrounding society, to show concrete integration into the city, but at the same time show the wounds inflicted by racial legislation. Almost a suspended judgment, uncertain between two polarities, two interpretative paradigms: the good philosemitic and supportive Italian is opposed to the fascist Italian, obedient to the regime, treacherous.
This seems to me to be an extremely significant way of telling the story: it makes us understand the condition of Italian Jews squeezed between the need to feel integrated and accepted and the need to return to that fateful moment in which daily life broke apart. It is no coincidence that memories come back with more force after so many years. Many of the survivors died after maintaining silence all their lives. Except Tullio Fo who continues his work of testimony in schools and appeared in the docu-fiction of Rai 1 Children of Destiny, the other witnesses have sadly left us. Their stories are more precious than ever at a time when the tragic story of the fascist regime and the Republic of Sal resurfaces in the national discussion. Against trivializations and sweetening of history but also against the abstract rhetoric of evil, these stories show us the consequences of infamous laws and actions in people’s concrete lives.
The Corriere del Mezzogiorno newsletter
If you want to stay updated on the news of Campania, subscribe for free to the Corriere del Mezzogiorno newsletter. Arrives daily straight to your inbox at 12 noon. Just click here
January 27, 2023 | 1:37 pm
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED
