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In the years 1933-1945 the Jewish communities in Europe was hardly persecuted. After losing civil rights, Jews were deported in crowds in the death-camps, which were scattered across the European area under the Nazi control (see the map of the camps, “mappa” dei campi di sterminio in Europa, in the web site edited by the documentation centre and foundation Fondazione Memoria della Deportazione, Centro studi e documen-tazione sulla Resistenza e sulla Deportazione nei lager nazisti).

Also in Italy the fascist regime pursued the anti-Semitic persecutions, at the beginning (years 1938-1943) through promulgating the anti-Jews laws, and later through arresting and deporting Jews (1943-1945), in concert with the Repubblica Sociale Italiana and the au-thorities of the Nazi occupation. When examining the laws of the time, we can retrace the principal steps of this complex and tragic page of Italian history.

Anti-Jewish legislation actually represent the endpoint of a long anti-Semitic campaign which, in Italy as well as in Europe, had been developing from the half nineteenth-century. In Italy the acme was reached after 1938, particularly after publishing the Manifesto della razza or Manifesto degli Scienziati Razzisti, which appeared, firstly in anonymous form in the newspaper «Giornale d'Italia» of the 14th July 1938, and later on the magazine «La Difesa della razza» of the 5th Au-gust 1938¹⁹.
This document – which established on a biological base the concept of a “Jewish race” – was fol-lowed by the first measures of expulsion of teachers and students from schools and universities. Among the various racial laws in fact, some rules heavily impacted on the school organization of the time: with the so-called measures for the protection of the race in the school (Provvedimenti per la difesa della razza nella scuola fascista, this was the title of the R.D.L. 5th September 1938-XVI, n. 1390, in GUR n. 209, 13rd September 1938, later integrally converted into the Law 5th January 1939, n. 99, in GURI n. 31, 7 February 1939).

A picture of the freeing of the Mauthausen prisoners, from the web site of the 11th Ar-mored Division, that get into the camp on 5th May 1945. The division commander Harry Sauders is standing on the tank (on the left); at the machine gun John Slatton; driving, Marvin Stark. Over the entrance, the nazi eagle still stands out, which later will be pulled down by the survivors. See the "Calendario della depor-tazione italiana", by Italo Tibaldi. Dossier: 1945, La liberazione dei campi.

19 The magazine «La Difesa della razza» (Vol. 1, n. 1, 5th August 1938-vol. 6, n. 18, July 1943) is currently pre-served in many Italian libraries (see in Sbn catalogue). To deepen the matter, see the books: Francesco Cassata, «La Difesa della razza», Torino, Einaudi 2008 and Valentina Pisanty, Educare all'odio: «La Difesa della Razza» (1938-1943), Milano, Motta on-line, c2003.

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