BORDERLAND FASCISM AND ATTITUDE TOWARD THE JEWISH POPULATION

Fascist Italy was, together with Nazi Germany, accountable for many ignominious actions, in particular against Jews. By the end of the 1930's Italy had established a model of racism-based totalitarian society, just like Germany. For the Jews in Venezia Giulia the promulgation of the Racial Laws in 1938 was a double trauma. Firstly, because many of them had been part of, or even protagonists involved in, the irredentist movement before WWI and therefore believed that they were "equal" to others. Secondly, because they thought that in Italy, unlike in Germany or other central European countries where their ancestors had originated from, there was no anti-Semitism. In Venezia Giulia, the prevailing sentiments were those of nationalism and ethnocentrism, or the so-called borderland Fascism (fascismo di confine), which had displayed many racist traits since its very emergence. Thus the publics of Trieste and Gorizia somehow accepted all anti-Semitic measures, as by then they had got used to accepting almost everything. The actions of the Fascists aimed against Italian Jews included the de-listing from the National Fascist Party (PNF) and discharge from the Fascist paramilitary. In the autumn of 1938, these measures were implemented against Jews in all Italian regions. The federal secretary of the Trieste fascio, Emilio Grazioni, reported to the PNF headquarters in Rome that in Trieste the exclusion of members of the Jewish race was carried out firmly and without mercy. According to the report, every Jew from Venezia Giulia was excluded from the party.