The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy

This book analyzes the role and function of an Italian deportation camp during and immediately after World War Two within the context of Italian, European, and Holocaust history. Drawing upon archival documents, trial proceedings, memoirs, and testimonies, Herr investigates the uses of Fossoli as an Italian prisoner-of-war camp for Allied soldiers captured in North Africa (1942-43), a Nazi deportation camp for Jews and political prisoners (1943-44), a postwar Italian prison for Fascists, German soldiers, and displaced persons (1945-47), and a Catholic orphanage (1947-52). This case study shines a spotlight on victims, perpetrators, Resistance fighters, and local collaborators to depict how the Holocaust unfolded in a small town and how postwar conditions supported a story of national innocence. This book trains a powerful lens on the multi-layered history of Italy during the Holocaust and illuminates key elements of local involvement largely ignored by Italian wartime and postwar narratives, particularly compensated compliance (compliance for financial gain), the normalization of mass murder, and the industrialization of the Judeocide in Italy.

Auteur

Alexis Herr is a Lecturer in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies department at Keene State College, USA. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Holocaust History from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, USA.

Résumé

This study of the Fossoli di Carpi camp, from its origins to its postwar functions, exposes not only the pattern of silence that facilitated mass murder, but also the religious, national, and international political sources of that silence. Despite popular belief, Italy's wartime past is far from a single-note narration of benevolence.

Contenu

1.In the Market Place: Fascist Socialization and Consent in Carpi

2.Germany and its Occupied Ally: The German Occupation, the Repubblica di Salò, and the Deportations of Jews

3.Fossoli and the Final Solution

4.Deconstructing the So-called 'Silent Assent': The Chain of Command, Compensated Compliance, and Resistance

5.The Politics of Blame

6.From Concentration Camp to Christian Utopia: a battaglia per la moralità