Persecution & deportation · Italy · 1938–1945
Italian exclusion and later German occupation were separate stages of an escalating persecution.
Explore ItalyPublished by WTJPublication updated
1938–1945
Persecution & deportation · A classroom ban becomes a threat to life
Italian exclusion and later German occupation were separate stages of an escalating persecution.
Ancestry replaces the person
The 1938 laws defined who counted as Jewish through ancestry and restricted education, employment and marriage. Children could lose school places because of their parents. The rules presented invented racial categories as official facts, then used those categories to decide whose everyday life could continue.
Occupation changes the danger
After Germany occupied much of Italy in 1943, Jews faced arrests and deportation to killing centres. German forces and Italian Fascist collaborators participated. The earlier years of legal persecution and the later machinery of murder were connected, but they were not the same policy under the same conditions.
Mario Finzi’s interrupted life
Mario Finzi, a young Italian Jewish lawyer and musician, lost his legal career under the racial laws. He later helped Jewish refugees before being arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where he died. His life connects an exclusionary rule with the choices and losses of an identifiable person.