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

This talk examines the the Italian war experience between 1939 and 1945 through two stories relating to individuals, groups, commemorations and monuments. Through these stories I aim to draw out the wide variety of the experiences of war amongst Italians, and examine some of the ways in these experiences were remembered, forgotten or silenced.
I argue that the wide range of Italian experiences of war were not reflected fully in public or official memory, and that there was a dislocation between the war as it was experienced and the ways in which the conflict was explained and understood from above.
This dislocation began to break down in the 1990s, at first through the work of historians and then through new forms of public memory and commemoration. A historiographical revolution has taken place in Italy relating to a wide range of themes linked to memory and ‘other’ histories of the war over the last twenty years. This revolution has also led to the widespread acceptance of alternative historical methods, such as oral history and micro-history. The two stories examined in this talk relate to Italian public and private memories of deportation to the camp of Mauthausen-Gusen and the tale of a resistance monument in Venice.
In general, and in conclusion, I will argue that contemporary Italy has been marked by a tendency towards divided memory. Events have been interpreted in contrasting ways, and the facts themselves often contested. It has proved extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any group to create a consensus around the past, or around ways of remembering that past. Individual events as well as history itself have been understood in a bewildering variety of ways. The state and other public bodies have rarely been able to build durable and commonly agreed practices of commemoration. There has been no closure, no ‘truth’, little reconciliation. Clearly, World War Two was the peak of this division, with its contradictions and civil wars which naturally produced divisive and disturbing narratives and memories.

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accompanying images:

Birkbeck/Wiener Library Lectures:

Date: 11 February 2010

Professor John Foot (University College London): ‘Italy’s Divided Memory. World War Two, 1940-1945.’

John Foot is Professor of Modern Italian History in the Department of Italian at University College London. He has published very widely on modern Italian history. His books include Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture, Identity, Berg, Oxford, 2001; Disastro! Disasters in Italy since 1860: Culture, Politics, Society (edited with John Dickie and Frank Snowden), St Martins/Palgrave, 2002; Modern Italy, Palgrave, 2003; Calcio. A History of Italian Football, 4th Estate, London, 2006. His most recent book is Italy’s Divided Memory, Palgrave, 2010.

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talk:

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questions:

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