This seminar is part of a series of programs held on the eightieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Racial Laws.
Context and background – Fascism. The Jews in Italy. Antecedents and Mussolini’s decision. Italian autonomy in the European context. The relation to the law against the populations of the colonies. The question of the Italian citizenship. The racial and biological paradigm.
Michele Sarfatti is the author of seminal works on the Jews and the anti-Semitic persecution in Modern Italy. His groundbreaking study, The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: from Equality to Persecution, Madison 2006, drastically changed the way in which historians consider the Mussolini’s Racial Laws and the persecution of the Jews in Italy. He has been Coordinator of the activities (1982-2002) and Director (2002-2016) of the Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea CDEC, Milan. He is one of the founding editors of the e-journal Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. He is a member of Scientific Committees of Fondazione Museo nazionale dell’Ebraismo italiano e della Shoah, Ferrara, and of Fondazione Museo della Shoah, Roma. See also: www.michelesarfatti.it.