(Italian Modernities) Emiliano Perra-Conflicts of Memory_ the Reception of Holocaust Films and TV...

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C o n f l i c t s o f M e m o r yThe Reception of Holocaust F i lms and TVProgrammes in Italy, 1945 to the Present

m i l i a n o P e r r a

P E T E R L A N G



I T A L I A N M O D E R N I T I E SEdited byPierpaolo Antonello and Robert Gordon,Univers i ty of Cambr idge

The series aims to p ubl ish innovative research on the w ritten, materialand visual cultures and intellectual history of modern Italy, from the19 th centu ry to the presen t day. It is op en to a w id e variety of differentapproaches and methodologies, discipl ines and interdiscipl inary f ields:from literary criticism and comparative l iterature to archival history,from cultural studies to material culture, from f i lm and media studiesto art history. It is especially interested in w or k wh ich articulates aspe ctsof Italy s particular, an d in m an y respects, peculiar, intera ctions w ithnotion s of mo dernity and postmo dernity, broadly und erstoo d. It alsoaims to encourage cr i t ica l dia logue between new developments inscholarship in Italy and in the Engl ish-speaking world.Proposals are welcome for either s ingle-author monographs or editedcollections (in English and/or Italian). Please provide a detailed outline,a sam ple chapter, an d a CV. For further info rm atio n, co nta ct the serieseditors, Pierpaolo Antonel lo (p a a 25@ c a m . a c . u k ) and Robert Gordon([email protected] .uk).V o l 1 Ol ivia Santovetti : Digression: A Narrative Strategy in the Italian

Novel. 260 pages, 2007.ISBN 978-3-03910-550-2

V o l 2 Jul ie Da shw oo d and Marghe rita Gane ri (eds):The Risorgimento of Federico De Roberto. 33 9 pages, 2009 .ISBN 978-3-03911-858-8

V o l 3 Pierluigi Barrotta and Laura Lepschy with Em m a Bond (eds):Freud and Italian Culture. 252 pages, 200 9.ISBN 978-3-03911-847-2
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V o l 4 Pierpaolo An ton ello and Florian M ussg nu g (eds):Postmodern Im pegno: Ethics and Comm itment inContem porary Italian Culture. 354 pages, 2009.ISBN 978-3-0343-0125-1

V o l 5 Florian M ussgn ug: The Eloquence of Ghosts:Giorgio Ma nganelli and the Afterlife of the Avant-Garde.257 pages. 2010.ISBN 978-3-03911-835-9

V o l 6 Christopher Rundle: Pub lishing Translation s in Fascist Italy.268 pages. 2010.ISBN 978-3-03911-831-1

V o l 7 Jacqueline An dall and Derek Dun can (eds):National Belongings:Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures.251 pages. 2010.ISBN 978-3-03911-965-3

V o l 8 Em iliano Perra:Conflicts of M emo ry: The Reception of Holocaust Films andTV Program me s in Italy, 1945 to the Present.299 pages. 2010.ISBN 978-3-03911-880-9



C o n f l i c t s o f M e m o r y



I T A L I A N M O D E R N I T I E SVOL. 8Edited byPierpaolo Antonello and Robert Gordon,Univers i ty of Cambr idge

PETER LANGQxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien



Conf l ic ts o f MemoryThe Reception of Holocaust F i lms and TVProgrammes in Italy, 1945 to the Present

E m i l i a n o P e r r a

PETER LANGoxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien



B i b l i o g r a p h i c i n f o r m a t i o n p u b l i s h e d b y D ie D e u t s c h e N a t i o n a l b i b l i o t h e kDie Deutsche Nationalbibliothek l ists this publication in the DeutscheNat ionalb ibliogra fie; de tailed bibliog rap hic data is available on the Internetat http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Brit ish Library.L ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publ icat ion Data: to be inserted

Cover image: Valentina Cortese and Hans Hinrich in L ebreo errante.Reproduced by permiss ion of Archiv io Fotograf ico - Cineteca del Comunedi BolognaISSN 1662-9108I S B N 9 7 8 - 3 - 0 3 9 1 1 - 8 8 0 - 9 Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzer landi n f o @ p e t e r l a n g . c o m , w w w . p e t e r l a n g . c o m ,w w w . p e t e r l a n g . n e tAll rights reserved.All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.Any uti l isation outside the strict l imits of the copyright law, withoutthe permission of the publisher, is forbidden and l iable to prosecution.This appl ies in part icular to reproduct ions, t rans lat ions , microf i lming,and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.Printed in Germany
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Contents

Acknowledgements viiC H A P T E R O N E

Introduction 1C H A P T E R t w oEarly Postwar Debates: Betw een Catho licism and Resistance 27C H A P T E R T H R E E'You Are O ne ofUs':The Early 1960s 49C H A P T E R F O U RThe 'New Discourse' and the Universalisation oftheHo locaust 79C H A P T E R F I V EThe Non-Event: The Broadcast of H olocaust 117C H A P T E R S I XFrom the Cen trality of the Resistance to that oftheHolocaust 149C H A P T E R s E v E NPostwar Debates on the Vatican during the Ho locaust 187C H A P T E R E I G H TConclusion: A Post-Antifascist Memory oftheHolocaust? 217



viListofFilmsand T V Programmes 233Bibliography 239Index 277


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Acknowledgements

This bo ok began as a dissertation w ritten at the U niversity o fBristol.M yheartfelt thanks go tomysupervisors T im Co le, Charles Burdett, and DerekDuncan. Charles and Derek skillfully advised me on my take on Italianculture. Tim introduced me to the complexity of Holocaust discourseand prov ided guidance through out, being an enthusiastic supervisor anda go od friend. The research w ou ld not have been possible withou t finan-cial contributions fro m the A H R C , the Faculty of Arts at the U niversityofBristol,and the British Scho ol at Rom e, for which I am truly grateful.The Dep artme nt of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol and theBritish School at Rome - where I spent nine months as Rome Fellow -furtherprovided vibrant academic environments that allowed my doctoraland postdocto ral research to grow and develop.

M any peop le work ing in libraries and archives helped me during myresearch, too num erous to m ention individually but all appreciated withthanks. A particular debt of gratitude is, however, owed to Gian LuigiFarinelli and Roberta Antonioni at the Cineteca di Bologna, Silvia Bruniat the R A I Biblioteca Centrale in R om e, and everyone attheArchiginnasioin Bolog na for their efficiency.

I would also like to thank the many people who have read portionsofmywork and have given encouragement and advice over the years: theCommissioning Editor at Peter Lang Hannah Godfrey and the ItalianModernities series editors, Pierpaolo Antonello and Robert Gordon, fortaking interest in this pro ject, and Robert in particularforhis very sensiblecomm ents; Yo sefa Loshitzky fo r her goo d and friendly advice at myviva-,Millicent Marcus and Guri Schwarz for their encouraging and insightfulcomments on early draft chapters of this book; David Forgacs for somestimulating chats at the British Sc hool at Ro m e; Alb erto Cavag lion, whosepassionate knowledge o f Italian Jew ish h istory and culture is only matchedby his enthusiasm in sharing it; Sim on Levis Sullam and the other editors



viii Ackno wledgementsof the Storia della Shoah at U T E T ; the participants and organisers ofthe M E I C A M conference 'Constructions of Con fl ict ' held at SwanseaUniversity in 2007, and in particular Jonathan Dunnage, who editedthe proceedings with a sure touch; Stefania Lucamante and everyone atItalianistica Ultraiectina; and the anonym ous reviewers ofHolocaustandGenocide Studies,MemoryStudies,an dStoria d ella Shoahfor their sugges-tions. Last, but not least, my thanks to Luc y Turner Voakes who took timeoff her own research on the Risorgimento to edit and polish my manu-script, to my students at Bristol and C ar di ff for their vivacious intellectualcuriosity on Holocaust history and memory, and to Angela for sharingthese years with me.

Parts of Chap ters 5, 7 and8 were originally published as 'Narrativesof InnocenceandVictim ho od: The Reception o fth e MiniseriesHolocaustinItaly',HolocaustandGenocide Studies22/3 (2008): 4 11 -4 0 , 'II dibattitopubblico italiano sul comportamento del Vaticano durante la Shoah: laricezione presso la stamp adeIIVicario,RappresagliaeAmen.', in StefaniaLucaman te, Mon ica Jansen, Ran iero Speelman and Silvia Gaiga (eds),Memoria collettiva e m emo ria privata: ilricordo della Shoah com epoliticasociale(Utrecht: Igitur, 200 8): 1 65 -8 0 , and 'Legitimizing Fascism throughthe Holocaust?The R eception of the MiniseriesPerlasca: uneroeitalianoinItaly',Memory Studies3/2 (2010): 95-10 9.



2-4C H A P T E R O N E

Introduction

Few historical events are as widely discussed and represented as theHo locaust. The destruction of the European Jews sits now squarely at thecentre of global m emo ry culture and pub lic debates.1 How ever, for manyyearsafterthe end of the Second W orldWar,Holocaust memo ry emergedprimarily within a national framewo rk ofreference,and to a large extentthis remains the case.2In this process of adaptation to differen t nationalcontexts, the Holocaust has been employed well beyond its specific his-torical meaning by differen t subjects.3 This also holds true in the Italiancontext.

This bookis astudy ofthepublic debates generated by Ho locaust filmsand television programmes in Italy, from the end of the Seco nd W orld W arto the present. It is by now a truism that films (especially feature films)and television play a key role in creating and reviving our perception ofthe Holocaust.4The encounter between these popular media and a sub-ject like the Holocaust is likely to provoke intense responses. This studyreconstructs the various constellations of meaning that were made avail-able to viewers at the time o f the release o f these visual products. Situatedat the jun ction of political and cultural themes, the debates engenderedby such representations in new spapers, magazines, and journals representa vantage point for looking into the broader construction of Holocaustmem ories in Italy. This 'domestication', in turn, refers to the diverse (and

1 Ala n M int z has define d this process as a shift from silence to salience; see Min tz2001: 4.

2 Fogu and Kan steiner 200 6: 293.3 W ollaston 20 01 : 507.4 Doneson 1998: 14 4; Loshitzky 1997: 1- 2 ; Done son 2002: 6; Baron 2005: 6.



2-4 C H A P T E R O N E

often con flicting) ways in wh ich the H olocaust has been appropriated bydifferent political an d cultural actors.This focu s provides the rationale fo r structuring the bo ok as a studyof reception. Films and T V programm es are not simply cultural productsoriginating and made public in a vacuum , rather their interpretation is acomplexprocessinvolvingsocial,cultural, and politica l practices.5 Focusingon these prod ucts' imm ediate reception is a means of exploring how differ-ent historical circumstances gave rise toavariety o f interpretive strategies.For this reason, the textual analysis o f film s and television is notaprimaryobjective of this book - although an element of close reading of the visualtexts will be present, in particular when ever their reception is limited ornon-existent,asin the case of many T V programmes. A second consequenceof this focus on debates is that the visual products discussed in this bookare not selected stricdy according to their national origin. In other word s,readers will not findahistory of Italian Ho locaust films or television,6buta study of significant trends in Italian debates on the Holocaust as theyemerge from the reception o f film s and T V programm es by political andintellectual opinion makers.The place held by the Holocaust in Italian memory culture has notyet been fully investigated, despite the fact that the country's historicalspecificity differentiates it from other national contexts.7 It is thereforeimportant to first acknowledge Italy's determining contexts (setting asidefo r the time b eingthepresence of the Vatican discussed in Ch apter Seven)and then situate its case within the existing literature.

5 Co nfin o 1997: 1399.6 O n this, see Lichtne r 2008 ; Marcus 2007.7 W ith an interesting analogy, Rich ard Boswo rth has defined Italy as 'a sort of Western

Yugoslavia, a border state of its bloc' ; see Bosw orth 200 6: 1090 .



IntroductionItalian memories ofthe Holocaust

2-5

The first and very obvious feature spec ific to the Italian case is that Italywasthe country where Fascism was born. While most European states, withthe obvious exception ofGermany,experienced fascist governm ents onlyfor limited periods, Mussolini's regime ruled Italy for more than twentyyears, reaching aneffectiveconsensus within society. Alth ou gh the regimeprom ulgated its anti-Semitic laws in 1938, the rate of survival am ong Italy'sJew ish po pulation at the end of the war was among thehighest in Europe.8Du ring the war, Italy shifted from the position of co-perpetrator of N azipo licy to that of co-belligerent w ith the Allies. The civil war that follo we dthe collapse of the regime and the armistice forced m any Italians to assumelife-changing decisions.9 Some sided with the Mussolini-led RepubblicaSociale Italiana (RSI, Italian Social Republic) and collaborated with theNazis.10 O thers join ed or suppo rted the Resistance. The m ajority did nottake sides.11

The deportations from Italy occurred in the midst ofacivil war andunder G erm an occupation. The arrests of the Jew s carried out by the Nazisand their Italian collaborators(oftenwith decisive help of local inform ers)took p lace at a time of mass killings of n on-Jewish civilians, and deporta-tions of mem bers of the Resistance and the army,aswell as conscript w ork-ers. The m ore than 8,00 0 Jews deported from Italy were on ly a fraction o fthe overall figure of 43 to 5 4,000 (mainlypolitical)civilian deportees. If weadd to this figure the c. 650 ,000 depo rted soldiers (who were in turn partof the around 1.2 million Italian prisoners o fw ar ), it is understandable thatthe Jew ish experience o f deportation did not em erge as significantlydiffer-

8 Zu cco tti 1996: 272. Josh ua Zim m erm an identifies this characteristic as the ma inreason why the Holocaust in Italy has received little attention from historians untilrecently; see Zimmerman 2005: 1-2.

9 Pavone 1991.10 Gan apini 1999; Lepre 1999.11 Lepre 200 3: 218.




ent in the aftermath ofthewar.12Italian deportees were lumpe d togetherunder the umbrella category of D Ps (displacedpersons),aterm that servedto blur distinctions among them.13

These com plex historical factors led to the construction of num erousmarkedlydifferentandoften conflictingstrands of m emo ry o f the war.14Inthe rigidly polarised ColdWarclimate, the m utually exclusive anti- and neo-fascistpu blic narratives werereflectedin political debates, thus reinforc ingrather than dissolvingtheseconflicts of mem ory.15M oreover, beneath thesetwo broad public narratives lay a myriad of'pulverised' memories of thewar.16 An na Cento's d efinition of Italy as a country lackingaconsensus ondealing with the past both amo ng elites and in civil society, leadingtoever-failing attempts at national recon ciliation, although o riginally referring tothe 'leadenyears',also applies to the mem ory of the wa r17 an d accounts forthe coexistence o f radically d iverging m ythical narratives of the war in theItalian cultural context.

The fascist and neo-fascist myths proved resilient notwithstandingthe political isolation of the nostalgic neo-fascist movement. For exam-ple, between the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s the weekly review

12 See Picciotto 2002: 28, 34; Fantini20 05: 9; Rossi-D oriai998 : 39; Ben-G hiat 200 1b:255-6.

13 Go rdon 200 6b: 9 0 -1 ; Matard-Bonucci 1999.14 Alter completing this book, John Foots thought-provokingItaly'sDivided Memory

was published. Foot defines the whole history of Italy since unification as beingmark ed by a series of high- a nd low-level civil wars, whic h have engende red d ivide dmemories often at odds with dominant narratives; Foot 2009: 11. Foot sees in theItalian states inability to create a consensus over the past the ultimate cause o f thelack of closure pervading Italian history (14). As a result, the politicisation of his-tory has limited debate of controversial topics (11). In this context, Italian eliteshave often supported a sanitized version of national history that played on the fewunproblematic areas; amongthem,the myth of the 'good Italian' (21), wh ich occupieslarge portions of my b ook .

15 Bartram 199 6:13 .16 Isnenghi 1989: 247 ; Ru scon i 1995: 7 ; Pezzino 2005 : 4 0 4 correctly defines theResistance experience as '"culturally" in the minority.'17 Cento Bul l 2008: 40 9- 10 .



Introduction 2-5

Rivolta ideale,the flagship o ftheneo-fascist press, reached an impressivecirculation of 150 ,00 0 copies inacountry with lowlevelsof literacy,18whilethe Minister of Defence of Mussolini's Italian Social Republic RodolfoGraziani's autobiography entided I DefendedtheCountrywas a best sellerof those years.19Among the themes of this literature was the idea that thereal country was the one 'betrayed' by the armistice and by antifascists,who were described as fifth columns of the Soviet Union. These themeshave resurfaced and g ained w ide currency (especially in the press) sincethe 1990s, in line with the crisis of the antifascist paradigm.20

The Resistance narrative, in turn, was far from univocal. The com-munist left pushed a double agenda, simultaneously presenting theResistance as a mass movem ent of national liberation and as a class war orinterrupted revolution.21The fo rm er served as a means of legitimising thePartito Comunista Italiano (PCI, Italian Communist Party) through thelegitimisation of the Resistance (and the role comm unists played in it); thelatter was used asa powerfulrallying cry to m obilise its constituency. Thisviewwascontested by the Catho licDemocraziaCristiana (DC, ChristianDemocracy) party, which in the Cold War climate supported a narrativebased on deprivingtheResistance of any broader politica l and social aims,and propose d the unity o f Italians against Soviet influence.22 A t the rootof these diverging postw ar interpretations was a different understandingof what Fascism was. Moderate forces saw Fascism and Nazism as formsof totalitarianism, a phenom enon that also included C om m unism . Theytherefore emphasised the criminal use ofstate force by these regimes. In

18 Foca rdi 2005 : 21.19 Gra ziani 1947. On the elaboration ofa post- and neo-fascist memory in Italy, see

Germinario 1999.20 O n the armistice made pub lic on 8 Septe mb er 1943 as the 'death of the nation', see

Gall i Del ia Loggia199 6.See also Mam mone 2006: 2 13 -14 ; De Luna 2000: 44 5- 61 ;Bosworth 1999: 84-99.21 On this, see Gan apini 1986: 98 -10 5.

22 Focardi 2005: 23- 7.




contrast, the left focused on 'Nazi-Fascism' as a form of capitalism thatnecessarily engenderedaviolent form of class-struggle.23While they disagreed on what Fascism was, both leftist parties andthe D C dow nplayed Italian com plicity and shifted the burden of respon-sibility onto the Nazis and their fascist collaborators, thus co rroboratingthe category of the 'evil German' as opposed to the 'good Italian',24 andde-emphasising Jewish suffering brought about by Fascism alone from1938 onwards. The reason for the construction of this narrative of theHolocaust was simple: the more Italy and Germany could be distancedfrom one another, the less responsibility lay on Italians, and the betterthe Repu blic o f Italy wo uld fare in postw ar agreements.25 For many yearsthis hegemo nic narrative influenc ed the ways in which the Holocau st wascom m emo rated by Jew ish institutions and remem bered by survivors intheir memoirs, which centred predominantly on episodes ofhelpf romnon-Jews and on the last tw o years of war.26

The 'myth of the go od Italian' is a furth er specificity of Italy, and itemerges frequently in this work .27 Alth ou gh its first appearance dates backto the end ofthenineteenth century, with the first colonial ventures andmassacres,28 its protean nature meant that it has remained strong notw ith-standing the changing contexts. Appealing to established self-representa-tions of Italians as cunning, law-bending but ultimately good -hearted andtolerant soldiers and citizens, this stereotype rem ained dynam ic throughoutthepostw ar perio d (and it is still influential to this day). Infact,it representsperhaps the single m ost importantunifyingnarrative about thewar,withinan otherwise deeply fractured spectrum of the politics of mem ory.

Tig htly linked to this is the persistence o f what I define as a strongnarrative of innocence and victimhood in Italian public memory of theHo locaust and thewar.This bo ok explores how this culture o fvic tim ho od

23 Boswo rth 1999: 88 -9.24 See on this Focard i 1996: 55-83; and Focardi 2005: 9.25 Focardi 2005: 4 -5 .26 Sassoon 20 01 : 12 ; Schwarz 2004 : 1 12 - 19 .27 Bidussa 1994.28 D el Boc a 2005: 49.



Introduction 2-5

has mediated the reception of H olocaust themes and representations andshows thatithas representedaform idable obstacle towards ackn owledgingthe reality of the Holocaust as an event in which Italy was implicated. 29The Italian problem with the Holocaust cannot be easily pigeonholed ina theoretical framework ofsilenceand repression. W ha t has always beenproblem atic in the Italian context has been not so much the ackn owledge-ment oftheH olocaust as such, but the widespread ad option of selectiveform s of m emo ry that constructed the H olocaust as a terrible but essen-tially foreign event.30

Another factor that influenced Italian narratives of the Holocaust(and in general those of countries that experienced Naz i occu pation) w asthat of understanding the mass killings of Jews, especially those carriedout outside the industrialised system of the camps, as one o f many extrememan ifestations of Na zi b rutality. Oc cup ied Italy experienced its share o fthese massacres of civilians, some of which immediately became symbolsof more general Italian suffering.31 This understanding of Nazi violenceconcurred in conflating the Holocaust into a version of national historyin wh ich the killing o fj e w s was read as part of the broader indiscriminatekilling of civilians.32 This generalisation of Na zi violence was comp atiblewith its universalisation, and in many quarters the Holocaustwasfrequentlyread as the epitome of not only Nazism, but also Fascism, totalitarianism,and the dark side o f m odernity.

As this cursory outline shows, the mem ory o f the Secon d Wo rld W arand the Holocaust in Italy is highly politicised. This is not surprising in acountry in wh ich p olitical identities have been extremely imp ortant, andwhere extensive areas o f collectivelifehave traditiona lly been significantly

29 See on this Bravo and jal la 1986: 21 -2 .30 Ro ssi-D oria, 1998: 33. Primo Le vis predilection for the Ge rm an term Lager and

its widespread use in Italy have been defined as part of this distancing approach byGord on, 200 6b: 109. See also Sul lam Calima ni 2001: 39 -4 1.

31 See Klinkhamm er 20 06 :19 5- 20 2 for an up-to-date bibliography; Gribaudi 2005:20n 22 f or a detail of some loca l studies.32 Gord on 2006 b: 91 .




influence d by political parties.33 Hie peculiarity ofthispredominance ofthe political sphere over other areas of social life was furth er am plified bythe fact that the two hegemonic cultures (Co m m unism and C atholicism)were far from d om inant in the rest of W estern Europe.34 As a result of thispoliticisation, memories oftheH olocaust w ere often institutionalised inpostw ar Italy according to criteria of political a ffiliations amon g com mu-nists,socialists, Cath olics, liberalsandlaycentrist,non-fascist conservatives,and n eo-fascists. The most relevant (and fractured ) narratives abo ut thecon flict are m ore effectively high lighted along these lines.

In my work , the divide between the communist and the catholic politi-cal cultures emerges repeatedly as an important theme. However, empha-sising the centrality ofthese two forces' understanding of Italian historyimplies neither that there was not space for other cultures, nor that thedivision between communists and catholics was always clear-cut. In fact,the D C may have been (until its collapse in the 1990s) the Catho lic party,but only 50 per cent ofitsconstituents were regular church-goers, just asthe P C I was clearlyasecularparty,but 40 per cent ofitsvoters w ere believ-ers.35 In other words, individual identities are form ed by a multiplicity ofelements coexisting at once.

For this reason, gauging the responses of em pirical subjects is far f romeasy, whatever the co ntext. As Jan et Steiger suggests, 'what the researchermust often do is resort to very contam inated evidence or convoluted andspeculative analysis.'36 It is in part because of these methodological diffi-culties that this book is not primarily centred on viewers' responses, buton how Holocaust films and television were received in the cultural andpoliticalworld.The need to preserve the distinction between pu blic narra-tives constructedbypolitical-cu ltural subjects and individu al responses toHo locaust visual produ cts is made even m ore cogent by the relatively lowfigures fo r literary consu m ption amon g the pop ulation.37 The num ber of

33 Ventresca 20 04 : 17; Foot 2003: 171.34 Sassoon 1997: 7- 10 .35 Sassoon, 199 7:15 8.36 Staiger 20 00 :11 8 .37 Lum ley 20 00 : 569; W agstaff 20 01: 299.



Introduction 2-5

Italian newspaper readers has rem ained steady at around 5million (exclud-ingthepopular sport dailies) since the end of thewar.This means that therehas always been a large section of Italian society whose worldview is notdirectly determined or influenc ed by the press. Ho wever, wh ile caution isneeded in order to avoidsimplifyinggeneralisations about the relationshipbetween viewers and films, it is also worth rememb ering that newspapersand periodica l magazines (the latter totalling an average of around 12 mil-lion copies per week) play a significant role in the construction ofavisualproduct's social identity.38 The centrality of political parties in shapingpublic debates in Italy is reflected in the particular importance of theirdailies. Secolo d'ltalia (MSI, Italian Social Movement),IlPopolo ( D C ) ,Avanti (PSI, Italian Socialist Party) were more than internal bulletinsforparty-memb ers. The scope ofI'Unita(PCI) went stillfurther,with thepaper enjoying a circulation of tens of thousands of copies.

Rob ert G ordo n argues that the influence ofp olitics on Italian mem oryof the Holocaust is not all-defining. He defines the imposingfigureof PrimoLevi (the single m ost important cultural mediator of the H olocaust for theItalian context) as an antidote against the divisiveness o f Italian p olitics.39Yet, there is no real contradiction between stressing the importance ofLevi for Italy, and nonetheless emphasising the influence of political fac-tors in shaping the reception of Holocaust themes. After all, as Gordonhim self notes, Levi's position w as 'relatively m arginal to the core centres ofintellectual activity o f the time. [...] He was left-leanin g [...] but in no wayconnected to the P C I, or the fellow-travelling comm unist or even ex-com-munist intellectuals w ho h ad shapedsomuch o fp os tw ar Italian culture.'40In otherwords,he has been deeply influential in fam iliarising Italians withthe Holocaust, in no small part thanks to his n on-militant hum anism. B ut,for this same reason, he was not strictly an opinion-maker in the day-to-day cultural debate. One example of this appears in Chapter Five, where I

38 For these figures, see Sassoon, 199 7: 162 -3 .39 Gord on, 200 6b: 1 13 .40 Go rdon , 200 6b : 94. On the reception ofL ev is wo rk by the Italian cultural establish-

ment, see Cannon 1992: 30-44.




analyse the discussions engendered by the miniseriesHolocaust ( M arv i n J .Ch om s ky , N B C , 19 78 ) . Levi 's comm ents on the educat i ona l va lue ( a lbe its impli f ied) of the miniser ies , and on the importance of deepening publ ichis tor ica l understanding of the Holocaust , d id not restra in the major i tyof the press fro m app rop riating the miniseries in order to talk abou t o theri ssues of ten complete ly un re lated to the Ho locau st .

Periodisation o f national mem ories ofthe HolocaustThese specif icities of the Italian case do not isolate i t from other nationalcontexts . The shifts in the construction of Holo caust m em ory in Italy can becompared to those in other countries . Italian discussions of the Holocaustwere the result o f the com bin ation of nat ional and international p ol i t ica land cultura l developm ents . Nu m erou s s tudies have appeared on the pol i t i -ca l and cultura l place occ up ied by the Ho locau st in the Un ite d States, thetwo Germ anys , Israe l, France , Aust r ia , and Poland .4 1 In very gene ral terms,this body of works suggests that, notwithstanding their di f ferences, in al lthese countr ies the Holo caust has mo ved f ro m the per ip hery to the centreof pol i t ica l memory and publ ic narrat ives . After a long per iod of s i lencefol lowing the war , the Holocaust became less and less per iphera l in the196 0s a nd 19 70 s , pr io r to emerging on a wid e sca le as a centra l m em oryin the 1980s and an object of mass awareness in the 1990s. 4 2 A m o n g t h efactors that served to obstruct a confrontat ion with the Holocaust in the

41 For the United States, see N ov ick i99 9; Mintz, 200 1; Flanzbaum 1999. For Germany,see Herf 199 7; Kattag o 20 01; Fo x 1999; Schissler 2001; F ulbrook 1999. Fo rth e Israelicase, see Segev 2000; Zertal 2005. For France, see Wiedmer 1999; Wolf 2004. ForAustria, see Pick 2 000 . Finally, for Poland, see Hu ener 2003.

42 For an application of this chron ology to the Italian case, see Go rdon , 20 06 b: 87 -8 .Mo re generally, Ti m Co le and Peter No vick see the years between 1967 and 1973 asthe cornerstones fo r the growth o f Holocaust consciousness in Ame rica; see N ovick1999: 149, and Cole 2000: 9. Emphasis on the centrality of the 1960s can also be



Introduction 2-5

West in the immediate postw ar were the international political develop-ments oftheC ol d W ar, which led to a situation in which the Holocaustwas the 'wrong atrocity'.43

The broad definition of the years between the end of the Second W orldWar and the Eichmann trial in 1961 as an age of substantial silence in allW estern countries representsastaple o f many reflections about Ho locaustrepresentations. If we comparethose yearswiththe present,thisclaimwouldappearprimafacieself-evident. Thevolum e and depth of H olocaust-relateddiscussion increasingly pro duc ed wo rldwide in the last for ty years w ou ldeasily dwarf and overshadow anything produced in the past. However,detailed research has contributed to the construction ofamore nuancedpicture.JeffreyShandler's work on the Ho locaust in Am erican televisionhas shown that the destruction of the Jews featured in talk shows andpopular dramas in the early days of this powerful medium in America.44Also referring to the American case, Lawrence Baron, Jeffrey Herf, andM ichael M organ have offere d a number of examples of reactions to theevent ranging from history-writing to philosophical and literary essays,memoirs,plays and otherformso f pop ularisation that represent early form sof domestication of the H olocaust.45 N or w as this an exclusively Am ericandevelopment. As Herfhas argued in relation to Germany, the 'multiplerestorations' of non- and anti-Nazi po litical cultures after 1945 allowed forthe establishment ofa (albeit minoritarian) tradition of memory of Nazi

found in Kushner 1994: 2-3; Mintz, 2001: 4; Lipstadt 1996: 195. The watershed inFrance was the 1967 W ar according to W olf 20 04 : 17.43 Lraverso 20 04 : 22 8- 31. The phrase 'wrong atrocity' is borrow ed from Novick 1999:87. W riting about France, An dre Pierre C olom bat and Joshua Hirsc h have arguedthat, alter the war, 'racial ' deportations became the object ofa massive symbolicrepression in public discussion an d in films, overshad owed by the Resistance my th.See Colom bat 1993: 2 0 -1 ; Hirsch 20 04: 29. Inasimilar manner,JeffreyHer f arguesthat in postw ar West Germ any the price for integration o f those compro mised w iththe Third Reich was silence in dominant political discourse about the crimes ofthat period, and that it was only in the 196 0s that the link between democracy andmem ory was established; see He rf 199 7: 7.4 4 Shandler 1999: 27- 79 .

45 Baron 2003: 62-8 8; He rf 200 4a: 461 ; Morgan 200 1: 9, 29- 30.




crimes which laid the ground for a more open discussion of theGermanpast in the follow ing decades.46Shifting f rom political narratives to Ho locaust representations, in hiswo rk on Holocaust cinema Lawrence Baron has listed fo rty-four featurefilms on Ho locaust themes produced wo rldwide between 1945 and 1949,twelve of wh ich came from the Soviet Blo c - amo ng them the highlyinfluential OstatniEtap (The Last Stop, W anda Jakubow ska, 1948), writ-ten, directed, and performed by survivors of Auschwitz and shot insidethe camp.47Anticipating a theme I will develop in a later section of thischapter, I suggest that what allows Baron to include many films as earlyexamples of Holocaust-influenced cinema, is his extensive (but no lesslegitimate) understanding of the wo rd H olocaust. Draw ing upon M ichaelBurleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann's definition of Nazi Germany as a'racial state',48 Baron considers any group that the Nazis persecuted onthe grounds that they posed a threat to the 'Aryan race' as victims of theHolocaust.49 This view is consistent with Baron's claim that the meaningoftheH olocaust is not fixed but changes with time and place, and that ifsocieties 'did not understand the Holocaust in the ways they do today, itdoes not [necessarily] mean they lacked awareness of the event or repressedthe mem ory of it.'50

A similar point can be made about Italy. The view of the 1950s as adecade of silence about the Holocaust is only partially accurate. The sixmem oirs written by Jew ish survivors of the camps between 1945 and 194 7,five by women plus the first edition of Primo Levi's Sequesto e un uomo(I fThis Is a Man) were not followed by others in the following decade.51The next film set in a concentration camp with a Jew ish p rotagonist afterL'ebreo errante(The W anderingjew,GoffredoAlessandrini, 1948) wasKapo

46 He rf 1997: 3; He rf 200 4b : 40.47 See on this f ilm Loew y 20 04 : 17 9 -2 04 ; Baron 2005: 24 -5 .48 Burleigh and W ippermann 1991.49 Baron, 2005: 12.50 Bar on 200 3: 63.51 Brav o 200 3: 128. For a closer look at this bod y of writings, see G or do n 2 00 0:

32-50.



Introduction 2-5

(Kap o, G illo P onteco rvo, i9 60 ). Primo Levi's first unsuccessful attempt atpublication w ou ld seem to poin t in the same direction. Levi sent a copy o fthe manuscript to the Turin publisher Einaudi. The manuscriptwasrejectedby Natalia Ginz burg , wh o was editor at the time, because it did not fit withthe house's ed itorial plans.52 The boo k was eventually released in 19 47 bythe small publisher D e Silva in 2,500 copies, and only eleven years later wasit acceptedforpublication by Einaudi.53 A s L evi him self said recalling theperio d, survivors' accounts sit odd ly with the characteristic optim ism thatwas a feature of the imm ediate postw ar period of reconstruction.54

Ho wever, this view is subject to qua lification. Focusing on mem oirs,An na Bravo and Dan iele Jallah ave limited the area of'silen ce' to the mostintense years of the Co ld W ar and D C rule between 1948 and 1952.55 Afterall, even a novella like Giorgio Bassani's 'Una lapide in via Mazzini' ('APlaque on V iaMazzini',1952) about thedifficultiesencountered by a Jewishsurvivor in finding understanding from his fellow citizens, was a way toaddress the mem ory o f the Holocaust.56 M oreover, although the first com-prehensive history oftheItalian Jew s during Fascism was pu blished onlyin 1961,57 shorter studies had already appeared prior to this point,58 anda number of histories of Nazism and the Holocaust were also translatedinto Italian.59W hat prom pted Einaudi to publish Levi's memoir was theunexpected public interest generated by the first exhibition on deporta-

52 The publication history is detailed in 'Note at testi' 1997 a: 1 38 2-3 .53 By 1997, the boo k had sold 1,379,0 00 copies; see 'No te ai testi' 199 7a: 139 1.54 'Note ai testi' 199 7a: 1382.55 Bravo an dja lla 1986; Bravo an dja lla 1994: 65. Cava glion 1998b : 151 defines 1949 as

the beginning of'silence'.56 Bassani 1998c. O n this novella, see W ardi 1989: 16 36 -4 1.57 D e Felice 1961. On the genesis of this book , see Schwarz 20 04 : 16 4 -7 2 .58 These included not only the whitew ashed story of fascist persecution oftheJews by

Mo mig liano 1946 , but also the first four instalments (the last two planned, coveringthe years 19 43 -19 45 were never released) of Spinosa 1952a: 96 4- 78 ; 1952b: 10 78 -9 6;1952c: 1604-22; 1953: 950-68.

59 Notab ly, Poliako v1955,Lo rd R ussell di Liver poo l 1955. Equ ally remarkable is the publi-cation ofaseries of articles by writer L uigi Men eghello in the journalOfficinabetweenDecem ber 1953 and April19 54.Wh at began as a review of Ge rald Reitlinger's Final




tion in 19 55.60In Ch ap ter T w o, I discuss those early develop men ts of Italianmemory o f the H olocaus t and s how that ' s e lect i ve memory ' i s a moreappropriate category than outright 's i lence' .

Whi le the extent to which postwar societ ies were aware of the mag-nitude of the Holocaust is debated, there is consensus in the l i terature onthe fact that dur ing the 1960 s and the 1970 s the Holo cau st rose to pro m i-nenc e in po litica l , cultural , and artistic debates in di f fer en t countries . T heEic hm an n trial has been defi ne d as a turn ing poin t in Israel's attitude tow ardthe H olocaus t ,6 1 an d in the Je w ish relationsh ip with Israel (an d wi th theH olocaus t ) .6 2 In the a f termath of the 1967 and 1973 wars , the Holocaustgain ed wide currenc y as a po int of re ference for und erstan ding the cur-rent s i tuation of the Je w ish state in coun tries w ith n um erically s ign if ican tJewish communit ies such as France and the United States , and became acrucia l aspect in the reconf igurat ion of jewish identi ty .

H owever , the s i mi la r i t i e s be tween d i f f e rent contexts mus t not beoverstated. In the Uni ted States , a redem ptive narrat ive of je w is h iden ti tyi ncorpora t i ng the H olocaus t was not contes ted by mai ns tream po l i t i csand culture , and a l lowe d for a sm ooth er penetrat ion of Holo caus t themesinto Am eric an society at large . Q uite di f ferently , in Co nti ne nta l Euro pe,the d i f fus i on o f H olocaus t themes has been s ub ject to more po l i t i ca l lydeterm ined m ediat ions , generated by the com bin ation of is sues of his toryand memory, generat ional conf l icts , and the controvers ies ra i sed by theunfolding of events in the Middle East .6 3

Solutionbecame a 100-page summary of the book and the first major historiographi-cal encounter with the Holocau st fo r Italian readers. See Meneghe llo 1994 .

60 The episode is narrated by Le vi him self in 'No te ai testi' 199 7a: 1387. The catalogueof the exhibition is in Lup pi and Ruffini2005.

61 See Se ge v2 00 0: 1 1 ; Loshitzky 2002 : 16 ; and Zerta l 2005: 92 .62 M iller 200 2: 131; Yahil 1990 : 8.63 In France,L'Humanite andLa Croixused Holocaust imagery to criticise Israel; see

W olf 200 4: 39, 42. In West Germany, the revival of M ar xis m in the 1960s and 197 0sresulted in a renewed interest in 'Fascism', althoug h the 'new left'was interested m orein the critique o f'bo ur ge ois ' capitalism in the present than in the analysis of N azism ;See Herf 1997: 348; Herzog 1998: 393-444.



Introduction 2-5

In Ita ly too, domestic and international pol i t ics inf luen ced Holo caustdebates . H ie E ichm ann tr ia l was wide ly covered in the press and p rom pte dthe publ icat ion of a number of books .6 4 However , as I argue in ChapterThree , i t d id n ot represent a lan dm ark event , rather i t fo rm ed part o f abroader reappraisa l o f the Res is tance which had s tarted around the sametime, and was m otiv ated as mu ch by dom estic shifts just as by internation aldevelopm ents . A no th er exam ple of the inf luence exerted by internationalfactors on the me m ory o f the Holo caus t in I ta ly is the imp act of the C o ldWar, in particular in relation to leftist narratives on the Holocaust. Thedeter iorat ion of re lat ions between Israe l and the Soviet U ni on soon af terthe creation o f the Je w ish state was fo llo we d by a wave o f anti-Sem itic p oli-cies in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc.65 As Chapter Four argues ingreater detail , wi th the 19 67 War, the gap betw een the internation al Jew ishcommunit ies ra l ly ing with Israe l , and the communist le f t (and f rom the197 0s on, the 'new le f t ' ) reached a po int of perm anen t rup ture . In I ta ly ,the P C I m ai nta i n ed an i n f luence w i th i n Jew i s h c irc le s (e s pec i a lly w i thyoun ger generat ions) through out the 1950s ,6 6 but could not avoid tensionswit h re levant sect ions of I ta lian Je w ry a f ter the 1967 and 19 73 wars . O neconsequen ce o f this com plex picture was a dow np laying o f the Jew ish spe-ci f icity of the Ho locau st (wh ich was politically 'useless') and a displacementof emphasis on i ts 'universal ' lesson. In practical terms, this meant that inman y cases the Ho locau st was app ropr iated f or current pol i t ica l a ims .

From the 198 0 s onwards , the H olocaus t has progres s i ve ly come torepresent a gro w ing f ixture of co nte m po rar y societies . Indeed , the m ore i trecedes in time, the more i t is discussed, bec om ing wh at L ev y and Sznaid erca l l a ' cos mopol i tan memory ' and acqui r i ng ever -new meani ngs .6 7 Thedebates over whether the H olocaus t was uni que have been replaced byquestions of why it is sti l l relevant today, and how its memory should be

64 Examples are Galante Garrone 1961; Rey nolds etal. 1961 ; Ludwigg 1961; DossierEichmann 1961 (with ap refa ce by Leon Poliakov); M iner bi 1962.

65 Ro 'i 2003: 22.66 Schwarz, 200 4: 97 -9 .67 Levy and Sznaider 2002: 87 -10 6.




preserved. 6 8 Indeed , 'me mo ry ' has become a key theme in contem poraryHolocaust debates at al l levels , from scholarly essays to the popular press .Cul tura l a r te facts s uch as f i lms and te lev i s i on products , and theresponses they elicit , inf luence ho w a society com prised f or the over wh elm -ing major i ty of v iewers/ci t izens with no di rect exper ience of the eventsrepresented ' remembers ' them. This notion of remembrance as dis t inctf ro m ind iv idual or group exper ience ult imate ly re fers to the co nstruct ionof pu blic m em or y as a social and cultural process ref lecting po w er relationsw ith in a society.69 This ph en om en on has been analysed by Br ian F . Hav el ,whose v iew of publ ic memory i s that i t cons is ts of a conscious attemptby rul ing e l i tes to s teer a publ ic recol lect ion of the past by us ing publ iclaw devices and statements of officialpol icy .7 0 Nonetheless , whi le publ icm em ory is clearly inf lu en ced by politic al factors and present concerns, an dwh ilst i t is to a degree con structe d, i t cann ot s im ply be iden ti f ied w ith off i -c ia l pol i t ica l s tatements .7 1 Dr aw i ng up on P ao lo J ed low s ki , I de f i ne 'publ i cm em ory ' as the me m ory of the pu blic sphere, a discursive space wi thin soci-ety where di f ferent collective memories confront each other.72 S ince mediasuch as f i lms, televis ion, and newspapers play a key role in forming publicm e m o r y ,7 3 i t is therefore important to investigate how the media approachhistorical events, in l ight of Jo h n B odn ar 's observation that pu blic m em oryis a body of ideas about the past that help to shape a society 's notion notonly of i ts past, but also of i ts present, and by implication of i ts future.7 4

68 Rosenfeld 200 4: 369 -92 ; Baron, 2005: ix. See also Kansteiner 1994: 1 45 -7 1.69 Forest, John son, and Ti ll 20 04 : 357 -8 0; Hutto n 1993: 79. For examples of work sthat focus on the political dimension of Holocaust memory, see Kansteiner 2002:

18 7- 8 ; Kan steiner 20 0 6 :1 1- 2 5; For other examples of analyses centred on the politi-cal aspects of public memory, see Wolf 2004; Herf 1997; Cole 2000; Novick 1999:3-7 , 279 -80 ; Clendinnen 1999: 183 ; Hof fma nn 20 04 : 16 6 ; Young 19 93 : 1 - 1 5 ; Segev2000; Pohl 2004: 19-36; Mintz, 2001: 160, 170; Carrier 2005; Zertal , 2005: 66;Koshar 1998: 10.

70 Hav el 2005: 608.7 1 Conf ino, 1997 : 139 4- 7 ; Niven 2008: 427 -36 .72 Jedlowski 2005: 40; Jedlowsk i 2002: 123 -4 ; Jedlowski, 200 1: 29 -4 4.73 Roediger and Wertsch 20 08 :16 .74 Bod nar 1993: 15.



Introduction 2-5

Studying the immediate reception of Holocaust f i lms provides an opportu-nity to ref lect upon the interaction between the objects of representation,and the way they are adopted, manipulated, ignored, or transformed bydi f feren t pub l ic subjects acco rding to thei r ow n interests .75

Italian Holocaust films and television

Just as the memory of the Holocaust in Italy has yet to be explored fully,the same can be said about f i lms and televis ion. The study of Holocausttelevis ion, in particular , is quantitatively very l im ited.7 6T his is perha ps sur-pris in g, i f we c onsid er that Italy is a co un try wit h n otor ious ly low levels ofl i teracy, and in which televis ion has played an important 'educational ' rolesince its ince ptio n, thus representing a prim e source of historic al in form a-tion for large sections of the public.7 7 T o be fair , i t is to be said that T Vnetw orks a l l over Europe have been very s low in open ing up thei r archivesto external researchers.78 In Italy, while commercial networks have to thisday made no pr ovi s ion to make their archives accessible, state b roadca sterR A I has digitised large portion s o f i ts collection . As a result of this di f f ic ultaccess to the source material , combined perhaps with a certain suspicionby scholars to engage with a notor ious ly lowly medium, the f i lm s ide ofvisual representations of the Holocaust produced in Italy has been discussedrelatively more in depth.

75 Bo th Co nf ino and Kansteine r stress the importan ce of reception in the historyof memory. Confino proposes to think of it as the articulation of the relationshipbetween the social, the cultural, and the political. See C on fin o 199 7:13 99 . Kansteiner,in turn, stresses the importance of reception in shedding light on the sociologicalbase of historical representations, see Kansteiner 20 02 :18 0.

76 See Marcus 200 7: 64- 8, 72 -5 , and 125-39 ; Perra 2008; 2010a; 2010b.77 Ginsborg 2001: 108.78 Kansteiner 20 06 :13 1 ; Maeck 2009: 17.




Cinematic representations of the Holocaust produced in Italy havebeen approachedfromtwo main perspectives. The first and most com monapproach is the thematic one. Thisoffersa textual analysis o f films (or someof their aspects) situating them alongside other cinematic products, or iso-lating some o f their relevant themes. For example, An nette Insdorfsstudyof Holocaust films pays litde attention to their context of production orreception. Two works likePasqualinoSettebellezze (Seven Beauties, LinaWertmuller, 1975) andZ^ vitaebella (Life Is Beau tiful, Robe rto Benigni,1997 ) separated by over twentyyears,and which engendered significantlydiffe rent debates in Italy, are analysed as par t ofthe 'Holocaust laughter'sub-genre.79While often stimulating, this thematic approach sometimesruns the risk of relying oninsufficientcontextualisation of thefilms.This isthe case of Om er Bartov's com ments on W ertmuller and Benigni's wo rks.The story ofa small-time crook struggling to survive in a German campas an Italian P O W is seen by Bartov as playing with the notion of je w is hvictim ho od and criticised on this basis as 'disturbing'. Ho wever, as I showin Chap ter Four, the theme o fje w is h victim hoo d was relatively marginalin m id-1970 s Italy, and B artov's criticism is more a reflection of our ow nHo locaust-conscious position as contem porary viewers than thefilm s,orfo r that m atter, those of its context o f produc tion. The same can be saidabout Bartov's remark that many Italian viewers of La vita e bella thoughtthat Ben igni h imself was Jew ish. This is hardly believable given Benigni'snotoriety, and again it seems m ore likelyareflection of the reaction o fv iew -ers unfam iliar with Italian con temp orary culture than a genuine opin ionamongst Italian viewers.80

A second approach analyses Italian H olocaust films by takingthe filmictextsas astartingpointfor thediscussion o f Holocaust m emo ryinItaly. Thishas been the metho d recently adop ted by M illicent Marcus an d Gia com oLichtner, among others. Marcus and Lichtner have outlined the prevail-ing trends in Italian Holocaust films. Marcus draws upon Eric Santner'stheorising of m ourn ing as a necessary wo rk u ndertaken by societies in

79 Insdorf 2003: 59 -74, 27 6- 92 .80 Bartov 2005: 68 -70 .



Introduction 2-5

order to come to terms with the Holocaust. 81 In her view, the end of theC o ld W ar and the subsequent easing of ideological divisions w ithin Italy'shistory-writing and culture, the influx of imm igrants into the country, aswell as the more relaxed approach to Jew ish discourse w ithin Cath olicism,all favoured the development ofa more open and vibrant reconsidera-tion of the historical wo un d wrou ght upon Italy's Jew ry and own sense ofcommunity.82As a result of her view, the analysis o f contem porary trendsin Italian H olocaust cinema represents the core of her wo rk, fo llow ingthe discussion ofafairly comp rehensive body of earlier films. W hile ouranalyses converge in m any points and ou r respective wo rks can be read ascomplementary, there are also important differences between this bookand Marcus' research, originating in part from the different methodolo-gies employed and source-material consulted. While Marcus' analysis isprim arily driven by the films themselves, wh ich she discusses with a greatdegree o f subtlety an d significant attention to their textual nuances, myown narrative focuses less on the filmic texts, and more on the context oftheir reception. In other words, I am less concerne d with what the film s'say' than with w hat opinion -form ers said wh en discussingthem.This dif-ferent methodo logy occasionally results indifferentinterpretations. This isthe case in particu lar o f the study of the recent m iniseriesPerlasca:uneroeitaliano (Perlasca: The Courage of a Just M an, Alberto N egrin, R A I U N O ,200 2). W hile M arcus seesinPerlascaasign of 'Italy's recent willingness tocon fron t Ho locaust history', I argue in the conclusion that the uses madeof the miniseries were altogetherlesslim pid, often displayingaremarkablelack of willingness to face Fascism's responsibility for the Holocaust. 83

Lichtner's study sensibly argues that the majority o f Italian Ho locaustfilm s too often displayed a failure to come to grips with the magn itude ofthe event, let alone engage with Italy's role in it. In his view, this failureled to two consequences. The first is that Italian Holocaust films display

81 For Santn ers discussion of the Trauerarbeit, see Santner 1992 : 143-54.82 Marcus 20 0 7: 16 -2 0 . Earl ier discussions ofLa vita e bellaandZrf tregua(The Truce,

Francesco Rosi, 1997) can be found in Marcus 2002: 253-84 (a previous version ofthe chapter on La vita e bella is in Marcus 2000 : 153- 70) .83 Marcus 20 07 :12 6.




a preference f or setting their action abroad.Kapd is the story ofaFrenchJew, IIportiere di notte (The Night Porter, Liliana Cavani, 1974) is setinAustria,Jona chevisse nella balena (Jonah Who Lived in the Whale,Roberto Faenza, 1993) in Holland. When set in Italy, Holocaust filmsstress the moral indolence of Italians during and after the war, and evensome o f the best amo ng them are more about com placency than persecu-tion, more abou t Italy than abou t the H olocaust, and ultimately illustratea tendency to refer to conventional issues such as social, economic, andeven regionaldifferenceswith in the country. Lichtner explains this faultydynamic of memory by pointing to the illusion ofaclean slate providedby the Resistance, the high survival rate of Italian Jewry,and the absenceofa catalyst such as decolonisation that might have served to encouragecritical reth inking of Italy's past.84 Althou gh Lichtner's selection of films isat times arbitrary an d the m ethodo logical rationaleforhis work that 'onlyby studying dom estic films could one truly gauge the relationship betweencinema as a cultural produ ct and the society that has prod uced it' is basedon a truism (if the relationship betw een films and the society that produ cethem is the object of study, then the analysis o f dom estic films is the onlypossible approach), his general thesis corroborates m y own researchandhiswork abounds with insightful comments about the films, some of whichare also discussed here.85

An oth er analysis of Italian Holocaust film s and television programmeshas been proposed by C arlo Saletti inashort article published in the Italianedition ofThe HolocaustEncyclopaediaeditedbyWalter Laqueur.86Saletti'schron ology is not too dissimilar from the one I adopt here. Afte r several

84 Lichtn er 2008 : 4- 5 , 84. Some of these themes were introduced in Lichtne r 2005:2 3 6 -42 .

85 Lichtn er, 200 8: 7. Lich tne r never me ntions the films of the 19 40 s and early 1950s,and particu larly strikin g in this sense is the om ission o fL'ebreo errante,whichisby allaccounts a Holocau st film. M oreover, a discussion of Florestano Van cinisLa lunganotte del '43 (The Long Night of '43, i960) would have probably al lowed him toqualifyhis claim that Italian films of the early 196 0s 'absolved conte mp orary politi-cal torpo r by glorifying past bravery' (45).

86 Saletti 200 4: 163 -6.



Introduction 2-5

f i lms produced in the late 1940s (see next chapter) the Holocaust and theResistance were m arginalised. P receded in the late 1950s by some docu me n-taries that hard ly circulated bey on d fi lm festivals, the theme of the H oloc austreturn ed in the early 19 60s (see C ha pt er Th ree), follo w ed in the next decadeby a reappraisal of Fascism, Nazism, the Resistance, and the experience ofthe camps (C hap ter Four) . From the 1980s on, the Holoca ust has becom e asteady presence in Italian cinematograph y. A similar pattern is also describedin terms of the introduction of Holocaust themes on Italian televis ion, inthe shape of journalistic reports , documentaries , and miniseries .

It is wo rth no ting that a lmost a l l b ibl iogra phic re ferences pro vid ed atthe end of the volum e con taining S a lett i s essay come f r om work s pr imari lydev oted to the representat ion of Res is tance , thus imp lic i t ly high l ightin g aconsistent inabi l i ty to disentangle the place of the Holocaust from that ofthe Resistance (and Fascism in general) in Italian discussions.87 Any changein the wa y the latter was ta lked ab out im plied a mu tat ion in ap proach tothe former . Some times , as in the early 1960s , both ben ef i ted f rom renew edpubl ic attention (which in turn re f lected broader pol i t ica l shi f ts ) . In the1980s and 1990s, on the contrary, one result of the declining appeal of theResistance was the opening of new spaces for other stories or, as Marcusputs i t , the stories of 't h e other.'88

Holocaust films and reception studies

The wide chronologica l span of my research shows that , far f rom beingf ixed, the Holocaust has had di f ferent meanings in di f ferent t imes , thusun der l inin g the nee d to reconstruct wh at the cultura l prod ucts discussed

87 Cavagl ion 200 4: 87 7-8 ; see also Argentieri 19 86 :17 8- 20 3. Ciu sai9 94 ; Crainz etal.199 6.A shorter a nd more recent presentation of the same research was publish ed inCrainz 2000: 4 63 -9 1 ; and in English in Crainz 1 99 9: 12 4- 40 .

88 Ma rcus 200 5: 323.




in this study m eant wh en they f irst appeared a nd to try to ref ine our und er-s tanding of the assumptions under ly ing the cr i t ica l debates surroundingthem.89This foc us has two conseq uenc es. The f irst is that, unlik e Law ren ceBarons study, i t has not been my priority to assess whether the receptionby cr i t ics and audiences was cons is tent wi th the di rectors ' intentions .9 0The social ide ntity o f a fi lm is a co m bin atio n of factors , of w hi ch the latterare only one e lement together wi th comments , reviews , and opinions . I tis important to note that within this social identity the directors ' inten-t ions or mo tivat ion are not necessari ly in a pos i t ion ofp red om in an ce . Theseco nd con sequence is a re lat ive agnost ic i sm tow ards the issues o f 'w o rt h 'and appropriateness of the f i lms and programmes discussed, in favour ofemp has is ing the Holoc aust genre 's va lue as a cultura l ph eno m en on .9 1

A further methodologica l inf luence der ives f rom the smal l body ofl i terature entirely dedicated to the reception of s ignif icant visual productsin the Un ite d States, Ge rm an y, Au stria, France, and Israel.92 Giv en the lackof specific studies on Italy, these w or ks on othe r nat ion al conte xts representthe closest theoretical reference fo r m y ow n wo rk.9 3 One under ly ing themeun i fy i ng a ll these works , especia l ly those examinin g C on tinen ta l E urope, i sthei r emphas is on the pol i t ic i sat ion o f the Holocau st . This pred om inan ceaccorde d to political themes migh t perhaps be explained by the fact that theEu ropea n press is in genera l terms more pol i t ica l ly/ ideo logica l ly com mit-ted than its An glo -A m eric an counterpart . More over , unl ike Br i ta in or theUnited States , almost al l European countries experienced either Nazi inva-sion or collab oratio nist regimes (or Fascism in Italy), as we ll as R esistancemovements and in some cases c iv i l wars dur ing the Second World War .

89 For a similar approach, see M intz 2001: 84 ,18 9 n 2.90 Baron, 2005: 8.91 For s imilar approaches, see Shandler 1999: xvi i ; M intz 2001: 38 -9 ; Baro n 2005:

vi i i-ix; Picart 2004: xxv.92 See Shandler 19 97 :153 -6 8; on the German and Austrian reception ofHolocaust,see

the special issue ofNew German Critique 1980; Col lott i i97 9: 8 3-95. For the recep-tion of Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) in Germany, Israel, and France, seeWeissberg 1997: 171-92; Bresheeth 1997: 193-212; Lehrer 1997: 213-25.

93 The only exceptions are represented by Lichtner, 2008, and Cic ion i 2005: 2 72 -9 1.



Introduction 2-5

A s a consequ ence , H oloc aust discourse in these nat ional contexts is moreimm ediate ly l ink ed to his tor ica l and pol i t ica l conf l icts.9 4The po l i t i c i s a t i on o f memory has been par t i cu la r ly emphas i s ed byH erf s s tudies on Germany. 9 5 In his article on the recep tion ofHolocaust inW est Germ any, H er f ground s his analysis on the politica l divide amo ng left ,centre, and right.96This app roach suggests that, in a cou ntry l ike G erm any ,di f ferent subject-pos i t ions and memories of ten imply di f ferent pol i t ica l/i deo log i c a l a f f i li a t i ons , and there fore d i f f e re nt un ders t and i ngs o f theHolocaust and of i ts representations. I f we add to this mix the fact thatthe politic al po sitio nin g of the Ge rm an press (and, it is my con tentio n, thatof the Euro pea n press in general a nd the Italian one in part icula r) is ratherclear-cut , we have a good rat ionale for adopting the pol i t ica l d iv ide as af ram ew ork of interpretat ion for reconstruct ing the place of the H oloc austin public debates.

These examples in the literature support my decision to explore Italiandebates on the Holocaust by looking pr imari ly at the press reception off i lms and te lev i s i on programmes . Recept i on s tud i es neces s ar i ly have astrongly hermeneutica l approach. But what i s interpreted i s not so muchthe text as the sum of meanings avai lable in a determined context andhistorical period. Reception studies , then, represents a meta-interpretiveapproach. 9 7 By re-creating the products ' 'discursive surround',98 the studyof thei r reception be com es a l i tmu s test fo r the reco nstru ct ion of m oregeneral d iscuss ions about how the Holocaust has been memoria l i sed inItaly since the end of the war.

94 As Jud ith Mille rha s written, 'there did not seem to be a "collective m em ory" in anycoun try I visited. The wa r bitterly divided people already split byclass,religion, andpolitical ideology', see Miller 1990:11.

95 Herf , 199 7 : 1 .96 He rf 1980.97 Kling er 1998: 112.98 Kling er 1998 :109.




D efinin g Ho locaust films and T V programm es

This approach has also influenced the choice of works discussed in thebook. The definition of Holocaust representation as a genre is far fromobvious, as it ultimately leads to defining the Holocaust itself. AnnetteInsdorfconfines the notion of Holocaust to the destruction of EuropeanJew ry carried out by the Nazis during the Second W orld W ar ," althoughthis narrow definition is belied by the m uch b roader variety of films shediscusses. Ilan Avisar explicitly states that truthful accounts of the ThirdReich and the Final Solution have the moral obligation to present theJews as the 'main and ultimate targets of Nazi atrocities.' 100 Relying onRau l H ilberg's authoritative fram ewo rk of interpretation, Jud ith Do nesonhas defin ed Ho locaust films as those describing the incremental h istoricalprocess of destruction oftheEu ropean Jew s from the first laws passed in1933 to the liberation oftheconcentration camps in 1945 and beyond, toincorporate films influenced by the Holocaust, although not about it. 101Finally, Baron's view o f the Third R eich as a 'racial state' leads him to openthe definition of H olocaust films to include movies about the Euthanasiaprogram and the persecution of homosexuals and gyp sies.102

In other word s, the definition of Holocaust films (or T V produ cts)needs a qualification. My own criterion ofchoiceis a combination ofdif-ferent factors. Works like Kapd, L'ebreo errante, La vita e bella, the TVminiseries Holocau st, Ilgiardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of theFinzi-Continis, Vittorio De Sica, 1970), and L'oro diRoma (The G old ofRome, Carlo Lizzani, 1961), representing the persecution of Jews beforedeportation or in the camps, would all fit into even the most restrictivedefinition of Holocaust film. But this book also discusses products thatcouldbe defined asHo locaust films only inabroadsense.Am on g them are

99 Insdorf 2003: xvi.10 0 Avisar 1988: 90.10 1 Doneson 2002 : 6- 7 .102 Baron 2005: 12.



Introduction 2-5movies like La caduta degli dei(Hie D amned, Luchino Visconti, 196 9),//portiere dinotte, zndPasqualinoSettebellezze,where the H olocaust is mar-ginal. Others, like Tutti acasa (Everybody Go Home, Luigi Comencini,i960),Rappresaglia (Massacre in Rom e, Geo rge Pan Cosm atos, 1973), andII Generale della Rovere (General della Rovere, Roberto Rossellini, 1959),address the theme o f persecution asasubtext of narratives mainly centredon other subjects. The decision to include these films (and others) is dueto the fact that their reception is indicative o f strands of Ho locaust debatescirculating in Italy at the time of their release.

Two final qualifications need to be made. The first is that, given thebook's focus on one national context, the inclusion of'asym m etrical' com-parisons with other national contexts guards against perceivingp heno m enathat belong to a broader scale as local pecu liarities, while at the same timehighlighting truly original elements.103The seco nd is that this isastudy ofthe reception of Holocaust films and television programmes as a way oflookingatbroader public debates on the Ho locaust in Italy. For this reason,there is no systematic analysis oftheJew ish press.104

103 I borro wth e notion of 'asymm etrical comparisons' from jiirgen Kocka, who definesthem as those approaches that 'investigate one case carefully while limiting them-selves to a mere sketch of the othe r case(s) whic h serve(s) as com parative referencepoint(s)', see Ko cka 1999: 4 0. Foradiscussion of some o f the risks of non-comp arativehistories, see Loren z 1999: 25-3 9.10 4 On the elaboration ofH oloc aust memory by Italian Jewry, see Sch wa rz20 04; Sa rfatti1998; Toscano 1985 -87 : 293-325.



39 .C H A P T E R HREE

Early Postwar Debates:Between Catholicism and Resistance

News of the cr imes perpetrated by the Nazis in the camps reached Ita lyin the chaotic a f termath of the Sec on d W orld W ar . The wo rds used in thepress to describe those events were the f irst attempts to confer them witha meaning and narrat ive form. Guri Schwarz has def ined the immediatepo stw ar period as exceptionally imp ortan t fo r the construction of an Italianm em ory o f the Holo cau st, because the stereotypes pu t for w ar d at this t imeinf luenced the culture and mental i ty on the i ssue for years to come. 1 A snoted in the previous chapter, the disastrous outcome of the war and theend of the fascist regime required that the Republic of Italy be distancedfrom the country 's recent past as much as poss ible . 2 The Res is tance andthe a l leged i nbui l t non-rac i s m and ant i f a s c i s m o f Chr i s t i an I ta ly werei ns t rumenta l i n th i s proces s .3 Moreover , s ince responses to cataclysmsrarely ackn ow ledge their qualitative di f feren ce, but often centre on fam iliarf ram ew ork s that re inforce ex is t ing bel ie fs,4 Cathol ic i sm and the ethics ofthe Resistance - the tw o belief systems that emerg ed as do m ina nt in Italyin the immed iate aftermath of the wa r - were the two paradigms mo st oftenused to describe and s ig ni fy the Ho locaust .5 The extermination of the Jew swas inco rpo rated into these two n arratives. On e result of this com bin ation

1 Schwarz 200 4: 1 12 -15 .2 Focardi 2005: 4 - 7.3 On the narratives put forw ard in the immediate postwar, see Cavazza 2001.4 Baron 2003: 63; W inter 1995: 5.5 The centrality of these tw o parad igms in pos twa r Italy's politics of m em ory is also

at the centre of Po ggiolini 200 2.



28. C H A P T E R THREE

of factors wasawidespread lack of emphasis on Italy's participat ion in thepersecution and destruction oftheJew s in ItalyThese characteristics emerge fro m the analysis of how the press in lib-erated Italy presented d eportation to its readers in 1945. Altho ug h lackingbackgrou nd inform ation on the camps' system and their structures, newscoverage of deportation was episodic but not in short supply.6The Jewishexperience of deportation did not stand out asdifferentin qualitative termsfrom that of other groups, but no r was it repressed.7More noteworthy inthese early accounts is the pau city ofreferencesto the existence o f campsoperating within the Italian borders, and to fascist and Italian com plici-ties.8While references to Italy were scarce, accounts set in Mauthausen,Buchenwald, Dachau, and toalesser extent Au schw itz, proliferated.

W hile the Holocaust was presented in the vast majority ofcasesas adistant foreign event, the description ofitsvictims relied on pre-establishedcategories. In the m ajority of cases, the deportees wereconflatedwith politi-cal prisoners.9This was also true oftherelatively extensive body of mem-oirs written and published (often with very little circulation) in the yearsbetween 1945 and 1947. The 55 texts (of which 12 were by or about Jew ishdeportees, 19 about political deportees, and 11 about military internees)often strived to present deportation as 'resistance truncated.'10 A closerlook at the memo irs written by Jew ish male survivors shows that, w iththe notable exception of P rimo L evi, they generally em phasised politicalmilitancy as a way to legitimise their experience of deportation. 11 Anna

6 Fantini 2005: 332. See also Ma tard-Bon ucci 19 99 :10 6.7 Italy was not peculiar from this point of view. On the United States, see Shandler1999: 23.

8 Fantin i 2005 : 95 n 86 ,10 3. A significant exception was represented by Avantil, whichsaw an equivalence betw een N azi and fascist culpabilityfor theestablishment in Italyof camps for political and Jewish prisoners; see 'La sorte degli italiani nei campi diconcentramento \ Avantil (4 May 1945) : 2. See a lso LaR ove re 20 07 : 1 1 9- 20 .

9 In Corriere d'informazione, we read about the extermination of'four million alliedcitizens', wh ile La Nazione delPopolo defin ed the Jew s as 'political racial depo rtees';see Fantini 2005: 85,1 47.10 Go rdon 200 0: 34.

1 1 Consonni 200 5: 184 .



Early Postwar Debates: BetweenCatholicismandResistance 2 9Ros s i -Dor i a has a t t r i buted th i s phenomenon to the f act that po l i t i ca ldep ortees c ou ld be assim ilated to the partisans m ore easi ly than Je w s orm i l i tary pr i soners . The pol i t ica l dep ortee was n ot on ly a v ict im , but a lso af ighter, an d was the refore capable o f legitim ately rep resenting the strugg lefor l i bera t i on . 1 2

Such a thesis is bo rne ou t in the com m un ist press.L'Unita constructedi ts narrat ive about deportat ion by separat ing 'comrades ' , who were notdeprived o f their hum an quality in virtue of their political faith , fro m the farless clearly def in ed grou p of non -pol i t ica l pr i soners . 1 3 The Cathol ic papersAvvenire d'ltalia, IlPopolo, an d Alto Adige, i n turn , eu log i s ed Ca th o l i cv ict ims of the camps as sa int ly em bod ime nts of true Chr is t ian spi r it , anddescrib ed the entire system of the camps as a strenuous challenge that ulti -mate ly proved the va l i d i ty o f Chr i s t i an precepts . 1 4 In general terms, thethemes introd uced by newspapers in their fi rst encou nter wi th dep ortation ,such as the emphas is on the Res is tance , the use of a Ca tho l ic f ram ew orkfor understanding the camps, and s i lence over the Italy-related s ide of theHolocaust , were mirrored in the f i lms produced in success ive years , andreverberated in Italian debates for many years .This chapter discusses f i lms released (and one which did not make itbey on d the screenwri t ing s tage) in Ita ly between the end of the 194 0s andthe early 1950s, and which are thus representative of very early cinematicref lections on recent events . Through what they show and their omissions,these f i lms offer an insight into the ways the Holocaust was construed inthe Italian context in those years . These f i lms are II monastero di SantaChiara - Napoli hafatto un sogno (The M on aste ry of Sa int Clar e - Nap lesH as Mad e a Dre am , M ar i o Sequ i , 1949 ) ,L'ebreo errante, Ilgrido della terra(The Cry of the Land, Dui l io Colett i , 1949) , and the scr ipt of Ifidanzati(The F iancees , wr i tten by Vasco Pratol ini and Franco ZefKre l l i and pub-lished in 1953) .

12 Rossi-D oria 1998: 38.13 A similar emp hasis on political deportees can be fou nd in theVSlAvanti , although

the newspaper also included more than passing references to Jewish sufferings, seeFantini 2005: 267-73.14 Fantini 2005: 55-9.




H ie films discussed in this chapter are not w ell known and are seldomcited by scholars.15Nor were they widely discussed upon release. This waspardydueto practical reasons. In the imm ediate postw ar period paper con-tinued to be rationed, and newspapersoftenconsisted o f one to tw o sheetsonly. M oreover, the films that are object of this chapterwerenot highbrowproductions demanding careful scrutiny by commentators. For example,many new spapers failed to m ention the release of L'ebreo errantebecausethe small space usually reserved fo r film reviews was taken up by M onsieurVerdoux(Charles Chaplin, 19 47 ), which premiered in Italyatthe same time.These apparently straightforward motivations explain the lack of cover-age ofthesefilms better than hypothetical decisions consciously taken bynewspapersandjournals to silence possible sources of controversy. In fac t,none ofthesefilm s touched upon the real sore spot o f Italian Ho locaustmemory:L 'ebreo erranteandIlgrido della terrawere set abroad and theirplots had little or no connection to Italy, wh ile the film version of Febbredi vivere (Eager to Live, Claud io Go ra, 1953) expunged any reference toItalian collaboration with the Nazis.Ifidanzati, the only one that directlydealt with the theme ofthepersecution of Jew s in fascist Italy, was nevermade.16In other words, the connections between Italy and the H olocausthad already been passed over in silence before these films were released.

These litde know n films were preceded by anotherfarmore renownedwork, Roberto RossellinisPaisa (Paisan, 1946).Paisa reconstructs in sixseparate episodes the Allies' march tow ards No rth of Italy, from the shoresof Sicily to the Po valley. The fifth episode ofthefilm is a lightly-touchedinterlude position ed between the frantic episode set in Florence and thefilm'sfinaland tragic chapter. It is set inamon astery in the Apen nines, anddocuments the encounter between a group of local Franciscan friars andthree Am erican chaplains - one Catho lic, one Lutheran , andoneJewish.The episode is centred on the clash betweendifferentreligions, an d it ends

15 L'ebreo erranteis l isted in Picart 20 0 4 :1 10 -1 1 . Neither Insdorf 2003 nor Avisar 1988mention any of them; however, some are discussed in Marcus 200 7: 30 -5 .16 For some prelim inary notes on State and market censorship in19 50sItaly, see Co ok e2005.



Early Postwar Debates: Between CatholicismandResistance 43

with the friars fasting in order that G o d may redeem the souls ofthetwonon-Catholic chaplains. The episode's ending is ambiguous. When theAmerican captain, who is clearly conversant with Italian culture, realiseswh y the friars arefasting,he addresses them with an enigmatic speech. H estresses the otherw orld lypeacefulnessof the place, a respite from the hor-rors ofthewar, and eulogises the lesson ofsimplicity,humility, and purefaith im parted by the friars.

This vignettehasbeen interpreted bothassharing a view of Catholicismsympathetic towards thefriars'ambiguous messages of evangelical brother-hood and universal love, 17andas acritique of the inadequateness of that age-old culture to meet the demands of the present.18Such an explicit approachto religious an d cu ltural difference was a novelty for Italian screens.19 Inparticular, on the basis of its unam biguous attempt to address the theme ofJewish otherness,Paisacan be seen as the first impo rtant post-H olocaustfilm made in Italy, and an early con tribution to the debate on the status ofJew ish presence in postw ar culture and society.

Ilmonastero di Santa Chiara andL'ebreo errante

Racial persecution was the subject o fonepoo rly d istributed feature filmthat went on limited theatrical release, mainly in the South, in 1949; Ilmonastero di Santa Chiara - Nap oli h a fatto unsogno is set in occupiedNaples and follow s the story of a Jew ish vaudeville singer, Ester Di Veroli.Ester has a (very unlikely on historical grounds) romantic liaison withSS o fficer Rud olph Stassen, w ho hides her in a convent. The love story

17 Bondan ella 1993: 78 -8 0; W agstaff 200 7: 21 7- 18 and 237. The persistence of'b en ign 'form s of prejudice in m any sectors of Italian society in the imme diate po stw ar is anestablished fact: for a discussion of some problematic liberal positions, see Finzi2006.18 Marcus 200 2: 32.

19 Fink 1999: 86.




i s uncovered by the other Germans , and Rudolph commits suicide . As aresult, Ester is arrested, only to be l iberated by the All ies soon thereafter .A further twist f inds her caught up in an ambush set up by fugitive Nazisand shot dow n by her r iva l Gr eta Mu ller , w ho a lso v ied for Ru do lphsloveand bla me d Ester for his death.

Des pi te a cameo f rom the e s tab l i s hed wr i te r A lber to Morav i a , thefi lm was largely ignored by critics , and was torn apart by the few reviewsreceived.2 0 As Marcus notes , the f i lm blends melodrama and sceneggiata(po pu lar plays on sentimental stories told w ith fre qu ent musical interludes).M usic plays an imp ortant ro le inII mo nastero di Santa Chiara. Early in thefilm, a provo catively-d ressed a nd heavi ly m ade-u p Ester s ings LiliMarleneto a f l i r tat ious male audience com po sed o f N azi of f icers and Ne apol i tan s .Towards the end of the movie, we see her again on stage, this t ime mod-estly dressed and wear ing no mak e-up,singmgMon astero di Santa Chiara,a song celebrating the virtues of Naples , in front of an admiring audience.Th e fun ct io n of these tw o songs is clear, as they sym bolise the de basem entand successive regeneration of the city after G erm an o ccu pation . Ho we ver,a third song, strategically dividing the f i lm in two halves, points at a per-sonal, spir i tual, and religious regene ration invo lving Ester. The c onve nt, inw hi ch Ester is hi di ng , is hit in an A ll ie d air raid. Terrorised , Ester wan dersarou nd the bui ld ing , unti l she overhears a grou p of nuns s inging Schub ert 'sAve Maria. In the con trast bet we en the nun s ' peace an d Ester 's turm oil ,under l ined by the imposing presence in the f rame of an image of Chr is ton a cross, we witness a scene that 'has all the trappings of an epiphany.'21A t the end of the fi lm, the same me lod y is used to hig hlig ht Ester 's conver-s ion in articulo mo rtis.

Music, then s ignposts key passages in the f i lm. The conversion of theci ty f rom a s ite of mora l debauch ery un der occu pation to one of reverenceis replicated by that of Ester 's conversion to Catholicism. These two con-versions feed and complement each other. For this reason, Ester 's Jewish

20 A sample of such reviews is in Bernard ini 1999: 23 -4 .21 Marcus 20 07: 35.



Early Postwar Debates: BetweenCatholicismandResistance 3 3origin is more than 'a mere plot device.'22It isapillar o f thefilm sstructure- regeneration and spiritual salvation are only possible with in Catholicism:extraecclesiamnullasolus.

A similar message is put forward in another, much more successfulfilm. L'ebreoerrantewent on gen eral release in February 1948 . As the titlesuggests, it was an adaptation to the post-Ho locaust w orld of the medievalleg

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