Backdoor Broadcasting Company

Event Date: Sunday 26 September 2010
Imperial War Museum, London

Racism, war, atrocity, and its aftermath in Italy, 1938-2010

2010 is the 70th anniversary of Italy’s entry into the Second World War, a decision that set off a chain of events that culminated in two years of devastating warfare and a cruel occupation. German occupation led to the deportation of 7,800 Jews and fostered the conditions for civil war to develop in the north of the country. Partisan warfare and German defensive operations led to repeated atrocities against civilians. The full story of the mass killing of Italian civilians and the persecution of the Jews, which began in 1938, has only come to light in the last fifteen years due to the opening of once closed archives and a shift in the political spectrum that led to renewed interest in Fascist and German crimes. This conference will showcase the new research by Italian scholars working in the field and facilitate discussion with UK-based researchers.

Programme

Welcome – David Cesarani .

Fascism, racism and the Jews in Italy

Chair: MacGregor Knox (London School of Economics)

Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti (University of Pisa)
The Jews of Italy from emancipation to Fascism (AUDIO HERE)

Salvatore Garau (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Fascism, anti-semitism and the Italian Jews (AUDIO HERE)

questions .

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Alessandro Visani (Rome University)
The racial laws 1938: reception and implementation (AUDIO HERE)

Ilaria Pavan (Scuola Normale, Pisa)
Social-economic impact of the fascist racial laws,1938-1945 (AUDIO HERE)

questions .

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War, atrocity and its aftermath

Chair: David Cesarani (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Paolo Pezzino (University of Pisa)
Warfare and massacre, 1943-45 (AUDIO HERE)

Michele Battini (University of Pisa)
German war crimes and allied justice  (AUDIO HERE)

questions .

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Guri Schwarz (University of Pisa)
Italian Jews and memory of the genocide (AUDIO HERE)

John Foot (University College London)
Italians and the divided memory of the war (AUDIO HERE)

questions .

The conference is organised by the Holocaust Research Centre, Royal Holloway University of London, in cooperation with the Imperial War Museum.
It has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the British Academy.

Event Date: Sunday 26 September 2010

Imperial War Museum, London

Racism, war, atrocity, and its aftermath in Italy, 1938-2010

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Michele Battini (University of Pisa)
German war crimes and allied justice

Michele Battini reconstructs the history of the major trial that the Allies planned to institute against the entire military command of the
Nazi forces operating in Italy from 1943 to 1945. The trial was prepared on the logistical bases and juridical ones of one of the 13 Nuremberg  Trials, that against the leaders of the Wehrmacht, but it never took place.The reason was that it would have jeopardized the re-integration of the German Federal Republic in the West community, and would also have risked placing the Italian government in the embarrassing position of having the Italian army prosecuted for crimes committed in the countries occupied by the Rome-Berlin axis. The enigma of this missing Italian Nuremberg and the explanation of the limits of the transitional justice can also be explained in terms of the political situation in post war Europe, the diplomatic relations between Italy and the Allies and the double game played by the Italian government.These  events served to give rise to a highly selective memory of totalitarianism and the war in Italy. Justice, truth and peace: all good things do not go together.

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PLAY

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