Young Italian Jews in Israel, and Back: Voices from a Generation (1945–1953)

Simoni, Marcella

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-89405-8_9

Young Italian Jews in Israel, and Back: Voices from a Generation (1945–1953)

Marcella Simoni⁴

Chapter
First Online: 27 July 2018

203 Accesses
2 Citations

Abstract

This chapter discusses how a generation of young Italian Jews was able to reinsert Italian Jewry into broader Jewish currents and political developments after World War II, with reference to Zionism and the choice of settling in a kibbutz. First, the external and foreign influences that led some of these youngsters to found Hechalutz—an autonomous, Italian youth movement—are discussed. Secondly, internal dynamics are examined, based on the exchanges between the groups that were still in Italy preparing for immigration and those already in Israel. Relying upon hitherto unpublished sources and a large number of interviews, this chapter draws a portrait of the post-war generation through their own written and oral testimonies and discusses its ambiguous legacy concerning the relationship with the State of Israel and immigration.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 119.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 159.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 159.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
In this chapter I use the term “Palestine” (short for British Palestine) to refer to the country before 15 May 1948; for events occurring after the end of the Mandate, I employ the term “Israel.” When I write “Palestine/Israel,” I refer to events taking place before and after 15 May 1948.
2.
Arturo Marzano, “Italian Jewish Migration to Eretz Israel and the birth of the Italian Chalutz Movement (1938–1948),” Mediterranean Review 3/1 (2010), 1–29: 18. Guri Schwarz presents slightly different data for the same period, i.e. 1041 Italian Jews emigrating for Palestine/Israel, 161 of which later returned to Italy. See Guri Schwarz, After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-Fascist Italy (London, Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012), 161.
3.
Arturo Marzano, Una terra per rinascere. Gli ebrei italiani e l’emigrazione in Palestina prima della guerra (1920–1940) (Genoa-Milan: Marietti, 2003); Amos Luzzatto, Conta e racconta. Memorie di un ebreo di sinistra (Milan: Mursia, 2008); Gualtiero Cividalli, Dal sogno alla realtà. Lettere ai figli combattenti. Israele, 1947–1948, ed. Francesco Papafava (Florence: Giuntina 2005); Marcella Simoni, “Gli ebrei italiani e lo Stato di Israele. Appunti per il ritratto di due generazioni (1948 e 1967),” in Roma e Gerusalemme. Israele nella vita politica italiana 1949–2009, ed. Marcella Simoni and Arturo Marzano (Genoa: ECIG, 2010), 47–73; Patrizia Guarnieri, Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration under Fascism: From Florence to Jerusalem and New York (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Arrigo Levi, Un paese non basta (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009). See also the newly released movie Shalom Italia by Tamar Tal Anati, 2016. Interview by the author with Luciano Segre, Milan, 2 October 2010.
4.
Corrado De Benedetti, Anni di rabbia e di speranza 1938–1949 (Florence: Giuntina, 2003), 73.
5.
Ilaria Pavan, Il Podestà Ebreo. La storia di Renzo Ravenna tra fascismo e leggi razziali (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2006); Silvia Bon, Un fascista imperfetto. Enrico Paolo Salem, Podestà “ebreo” di Trieste, (Gradisca d’Isonzo: Ed. Centro Gasparini, 2009).
6.
See Luca Ventura, “Il gruppo de ‘La Nostra Bandiera’ di fronte all’antisemitismo fascista (1934–1938),” Studi Storici 41/4 (2000), 711–755. Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism (New York: Summit Books, 1991), ch. 1. Giulio Supino, Diario della Guerra che non ho combattuto. Un italiano ebreo tra persecuzione e resistenza, ed. Michele Sarfatti (Florence: Inprogress, 2014). See also Italy’s Fascist Jews: Insights into an Unusual Scenario, ed. Michele Sarfatti, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, no. 11 October 2017 available at http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/index.php?issue=11, accessed 3 January 2018. For an interesting example of Fascist Italian Jews in Tunisia see Archivio di Stato di Livorno, Famiglia Moreno di Tunisi. See also Marcella Simoni, “The Morenos between Family and Nation. Notes for the History of a Bourgeois Mediterranean Jewish family (1850–1912),” in Gender, Nation, Emancipation, Women and Families in the ‘Long’ Nineteenth Century in Italy and Germany, ed. Martin Baumeister, Philipp Lenhard, and Ruth Nattermann (Oxford: Berghahn, in press).
7.
Quoted in Schwarz, After Mussolini, 70.
8.
Individual interviews by the author with Sergio Itzhak Minerbi (Jerusalem, 16 August 2009), Corrado Israel De Benedetti (Ruhama, 26 July 2009), Gabriella Luzzati and Aldo Eldad Melauri (Adar) (Ruhama, 30 July 2009), Bruno Levi (Ruhama, 30 July 2009), Donata Ravenna (Haifa, 28 July 2009). As a general rule, I have inserted the Hebrew name that many chose for themselves, or that they received, between given first name and family name. For those who also translated their family name or chose a different one, I have placed it in brackets, next to the Italian family name.
9.
Schwarz, After Mussolini, 76–80.
10.
As it is well known, Italian Zionism suffered from a late start and a small following, if compared with other Zionist movements in Europe. Part of the archives of the Italian Zionist Federation (FSI) are at the Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, Fondo Angelo Sullam and Fondo Leone e Felice Ravenna. On the pre-war period see Marzano, Una terra per rinascere and, for a local example, see Maura Hametz, “Zionism, Emigration, and Antisemitism in Trieste: Central Europe’s ‘Gateway to Zion,’ 1896–1943,” Jewish Social Studies, 13/3 (2007), 103–134. The post-war situation is clearly different, at least until 1967. The avant-garde that chose immigration to Palestine/Israel before and after 1948 remained a small group, and, as we shall see in closing, the majority of Italian young Jews opted for a renovated model of philanthropic Zionism and forms of Jewish socialization organized around Italian Jewish institutions, Jewish communities and youth movements. See Schwarz, After Mussolini.
11.
Marzano, “Italian Jewish Migration to Eretz Israel,” 18.
12.
Italki; pl. Italkim translates as “Italian/s” from modern Hebrew. In time, the term denoting the national provenance/belonging has acquired the marker of a specificity within the broader ethnonational definition of Israeli, as in many other cases (Polanim, Yekkes, Russim). The presumed particular role of the Italkim in Israel is discussed in La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 80/2–3 (2014/5775), ed. Sergio Della Pergola, Cecilia Nizza and Angelo M. Piattelli.
13.
Mirella Tedeschi, “Hechalutz è…,” Hechalutz 1/3, 6 Tammuz 5706 – 5 July 1946: 4.
14.
For a very interesting comparative case, see Chaya Brasz, “Expectations and Realities of Dutch Immigration to Palestine/Israel After the Shoah,” Jewish History, 8/1–2 (1994), 323–338.
15.
See the documentary by Chuck Olin, In Our Own Hands. The Hidden Story of the Jewish Brigade in World War II, 1998, available at http://mediaburn.org/video/in-our-own-hands-the-hidden-story-of-the-jewish-brigade-in-world-war-ii/, accessed 1 November 2016.
16.
Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah (New York: Random House, 1970); Ada Sereni, I clandestini del mare (Milan: Mursia, 1973); Mario Toscano, La “Porta di Sion.” L’Italia e l’immigrazione clandestina ebraica in Palestina (1945–1948) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990); Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
17.
La Brigata ebraica in Romagna 1944–1946. Attraverso il Mediterraneo e l’Italia per la libertà, Quaderni del Museo Ebraico di Bologna/5, ed. Franco Bonilauri e Vincenza Maugeri (Rome: De Luca Editori D’arte, 2005), 45, 49–50.
18.
Marco Maestro, Un Kaddish per Stalin, http://www.hakeillah.com/5_03_37.htm.
19.
Sergio I. Minerbi, “L’Hechaluz in Italia dopo la Liberazione,” in Verso una terra “antica e nuova.” Culture del sionismo (1895–1948), ed. Giulio Schiavoni and Guido Massino (Rome: Carocci Editore, 2011), 261–287. Marzano, “Italian Jewish Migration to Eretz Israel.”
20.
Cinzia Villani, “Milano, via Unione 5. Un centro di accoglienza per ‘displaced persons’ ebree nel secondo dopoguerra,” Studi storici 50/2 (2009): 333–370. On the international networks operating in Italy for Jewish DPs see Chiara Renzo, “ ‘Our Hopes Are Not Lost Yet.’ The Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy: Relief, Rehabilitation and Self-understanding (1943–1948),” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, 12 (2017): 89–111.
21.
The facility was rented by Raffaele Cantoni in 1945 and run by the JB until 1948. Aharon Megged, The Story of the Selvino Children (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2001) and http://www.sciesopoli.com, accessed 1 November 2016. See also Sergio Luzzatto, I bambini di Moshe (Turin: Einaudi, 2018).
22.
Henri Near, A History of the Kibbutz Movement, Volume 1: Origins and Growth 1909–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
23.
Carla Forti and Vittorio Haim Luzzatti, Palestina in Toscana: pionieri ebrei nel Senese (1934–1938) (Florence: Aska 2009); in July 1939 two hakhsharot for young Italian Jews were established in Orciano and Cevoli (Pisa). These were closed by the authorities following an order of the Carabinieri on 3 May 1940. On Italy as a refuge for Jews between 1934 and 1938 and hakhsharot see Klaus Voigt, Il rifugio precario. Gli esuli in Italia dal 1933 al 1945 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1993), 220–240.
24.
For this kind of language and rhetoric, see, among the many possible examples, Tullio Melauri, “Vita di Hechalutz. Da Trieste,” Hechalutz 1/2, 21 Sivan 5706 – 20 June 1946: 4 and F.L. “Che cosa faremo in Eretz,” Hechalutz 1/6, 24 Elul 5706 – 20 September 1946: 2; Nora Bolaffio, “La crisi della gioventù,” Hechalutz 2/1, 12 Tishri 5707 – 7 October 1946: 3.
25.
Alex [Alessandro Sternberg], “Hechalutz dei profughi,” Hechalutz 1/3, 6 Tammuz 5706 – 5 July 1946: 2.
26.
See Marcello Savaldi, “Ricordi di Via del Monte,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 38/7–8 (1972): 193–195. Marcello Savaldi had also been one of the few that had promoted a pioneering approach to youth education already in the 1930s, before his migration to Palestine. See Marcello Savaldi, “I campeggi ebraici: 1931–1939,” Storia Contemporanea, 6 (1988): 1121–1152.
27.
Interview by the author with Bruno Gad Segre, Haifa, 28 July 2009. “Silica era un profugo attivista di Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza‘ir che è piombato a Torino e ci ha silicato tutti.” See also the letter from Bruno Gad Segre to Silica on 10 April 1947 in Istituto Nazionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia, Milano (henceforth INSMLI), Collection Guido Valabrega, Folder 20/1.
28.
On Leo Levi, see Contro i dinosauri. Scritti civili 1931–1972, ed. Arturo Marzano (Naples: L’ancora del mediterraneo, 2011), and the documentary film by Yaala Levi Zimmerman, Leo Levi – The Man with the Nagra, 2011.
29.
Interview with Melauri (Adar) and Gabriella Luzzati.
30.
Minerbi, “L’Hechaluz in Italia dopo la Liberazione,” 276–285.
31.
INSMLI, Collection Guido Valabrega, folder 7, Letter from Sergio Izhak Minerbi to Guido Gadi Valabrega, Rome, 4 March 1949.
32.
The rifts were not only on the left of the political spectrum, but also between secular and religious kibbutzim. Arturo Marzano reports that already in 1947 the Chevrat Yehude Italiyah le-Pe‘ulah Ruchanit Yerushalayim [the Association of Italian Jews for spiritual action—Jerusalem] had criticized the non-religious kibbutzim in a small booklet; this provoked the angry response of the secular members of the “Irgun Olei Italia.” See Marzano, “Italian Jewish Migration to Eretz Israel,” 25.
33.
Rachel Baruch, Armando Menachem Caimi, Adele Calò, Germana Calò, Silvio Gershon Calò, Umberto Ya‘akov Calò, Elda e Aldo Campagnano, Arduino Caro, Arrigo Tzvi Caro, Emma Cortesi Sonnino, Enzo Mosheh Cortesi (the latter two married in Degania A on 18 May 1945), G. Zev Di Porto, Leo Arieh Disegni, Carla Rivka Gomez de Silva, Benzion Koenig, Yehudit Kun, Ilse Mandel, A. Shlomo Mariani, Laura Ester Milano, Sara Milano, R. Hillel Millul, Dalia Millul Anticoli, G. Lot Minerbi, Liliana Pacifici, Gianna Popper, Letizia Chava Popper, G. Mosheh Rosenwass, Nathan G. Rossi, Tullio Shmuel Segre, Ferruccio Barzilai Sonnino (Bar-Yosef), Dvorah Sonnino, Adolfo Efraim Ventura, Miriam Ventura. The group included four others who, upon arrival, enlisted in the JB—Sergio David Amati, Sigfrido Ariel Cardoso, Elio Eliahu Millul, and Ya‘acov Weiss (Fiume)—and a madrikh (group leader) from nearby kibbutz Puriah, Lucio Yair Levi. Archives of the Jewish Community of Trieste (AJCT), Collection Caimi, LeIedidenu, Luglio 1945, n. 1. Giornale del gruppo Degania A., “Notizie sul Gruppo,” 18–20.
34.
I have described the tragic story of Armando Caimi and analyzed the correspondence between him in Palestine and his family in Italy in Simoni, “Gli ebrei italiani e lo Stato di Israele.”
35.
AJCT, Collection Caimi, LeIedidenu, Luglio 1945, n. 1. Giornale del gruppo Degania A., Aliza Ilse Mandel, “La malattia dell’idealismo,” 13.
36.
Ibid., Ferruccio Barzilai Sonnino, “Incontro con un altro mondo,” 7–10: 7 and ibid., Baiah Baraz, “Parla una figlia di Erez Israel,” 10.
37.
Ibid., Silvio Ghershon Calò, “LeIedidenu,” 2.
38.
Corrado Vivanti, “Ricordi dell’Hechaluz,” http://www.hakeillah.com/5_03_36.htm, accessed 5 November 2016.
39.
Malkiel Savaldi, “Hechalutz. Sue origini ed essenza,” Hechalutz 1/3, 6 Tammuz 5706 – 5 July 1946: 2.
40.
Some pictures of Tel Broshim are available at INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, folder 290.
41.
Interview Aldo Eldad Melauri (Adar) and Gabriella Luzzati.
42.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, Corrispondenza Eldad Aldo Melauri, folder 17/1, letter from Eldad and Tzvi [Aldo and Tullio Melauri (Adar)] to Gadi [Guido Valabrega], Nahshonim, 7 March 1949.
43.
Individual interviews of the author with Idalba (Yael) Bassani, Donata Ravenna, and Bruno Gad Segre, Haifa, 28 July 2009.
44.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, Tullio Zvi Melauri, folder 16, letter from Tzvi [Tullio Melauri (Adar)] to Gadi [Guido Valabrega], Ruhama, 27 January 1950, about the imminent departure from Israel of his brother’s Aldo Eldad as shaliach.
45.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, folder 292, Marco Maestro, “Un Kaddish per Stalin,” also available at http://www.hakeillah.com/5_03_37.htm, accessed 4 November 2016. The journal Hechalutz was directed by Luciano Forti (1946–1948), Ruggero Iair Minerbi (1949), Corrado Vivanti (1950), Marco Maestro (1950–1953), Mario Sciunnach (1953–1954), Dario Di Capua (1954) and, finally, Giuseppe Franchetti (1954–1956).
46.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, folder 43, letter from Corrado Uri Vivanti (Chaim) to the comrades that have left Cevoli for Israel, S. Marco, 14 June 1950.
47.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, folder 43, letter from Corrado Uri Vivanti (Chaim) to the comrades that have left Cevoli for Israel, S. Marco, 5 October 1950.
48.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, folder 292, Marco Maestro, “Ricordi dell’Hechalutz.”
49.
[Corrado] Israel [De Benedetti], “Hachsciarà (sic) e kibbutz,” Hechalutz 5/9, 7 Shevat 6510 – 25 January 1950: 2.
50.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, Tullio Zvi Melauri, folder 16, letter from Tzvi [Tullio Melauri (Adar)] to Gadi [Guido Valabrega], Nahshonim, 16 September 1949.
51.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, Aldo Melauri a Corrado De Benedetti-Shoshanna, folder 43, letter from Eldad [Aldo Melauri (Adar)] to the chaverim [group] Tel-Broshim, 29 June 1950.
52.
Interview Aldo Eldad Melauri and Gabriella Luzzati.
53.
INSMLI, Collection Valabrega, folder 43, letter from Corrado Uri Vivanti (Chaim) to the comrades that have left Cevoli for Israel, S. Marco, 14 June 1950.
54.
Ibid.
55.
See Joel Benin, Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
56.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, Gadi [Guido Valabrega], folder 31, “Stato—Kibbuz—Partito,” Hechalutz, 8/10 15 Luglio 1953—3 Av 5713, 2.
57.
See INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, folder 50, for the original report of the assembly in which Valabrega was expelled. The translation from Hebrew into Italian is in INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, folder 292.
58.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, Tullio Zvi Melauri, folder 16, Letter from Tullio Tzvi Melauri (Adar) to Gadi Guido Valabrega, Ruhama, 24 November 1954.
59.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, Corrispondenza Eugenia Zargani, folder 22/, [n.d.] and 26 August 1953.
60.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, Tullio Zvi Melauri, folder 16, Letter from Tullio Tzvi Melauri (Adar) to Gadi Guido Valabrega, Ruhama, 21 September 1953.
61.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, folder 16, Letter from Corrado Israel De Benedetti to Guido Valabrega, [n.d.], 1953?
62.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, folder 16, Letter from Corrado Israel De Benedetti to Guido Valabrega, [n.d.], 3 December 1954?
63.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, folder 22/2, Letter from Corrado Vivanti to Guido Valabrega, 25 January 1954.
64.
Ibid., Letters from Corrado Uri Vivanti to Guido Gadi Valabrega, 4 December 1953 and 19 April 1954.
65.
Paolo Valabrega, Gadi. Ascesa e caduta di un giovane socialista sionista. Un’introduzione alle carte 1942–1953 del Fondo Guido Valabrega nell’Archivio INSMLI a Milano, Tesi di laurea non pubblicata, Università di Milano, a.a. 2006–2007, 103–105.
66.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, Tullio Zvi Melauri, folder 16, Letter from Tullio Tzvi Melauri (Adar) to Gadi Guido Valabrega, Jd-Hanna (sic), 5 September 1954.
67.
Interview with De Benedetti.
68.
Eliahu Dobkin, “Ritorniamo al chalutzismo,” Hechalutz 5/5–6, 14 Chislev 5710 – 5 December 1949: 1–2.
69.
INSMLI, Fondo Valabrega, Irgun Olei Italia di Tel Aviv, Irgun Olé (sic) Italia, 17 June 1951.
70.
Interview with Minerbi.
71.
Interview with Bassani.
72.
Interviews by the author with Piero Avner Calò, Magan Michael, 22 July 2009; Daniele Ventura, Raanana, 22 July 2009; Lia Pacifici Millul, Haifa, 27 July 2009; Marina Ergas, Jerusalem 3 August 2009; and Liana E. Funaro (high school teacher at the Jewish Secondary School of Milan in 1960–1962), Florence, 10 May 2010.
73.
Giovanni Battista N. Paglianti, “Profilo dell’associazionismo giovanile ebraico,” in E li insegnerai ai tuoi figli. Educazione ebraica in Italia dalle leggi razziali a oggi, ed. Anna Maria Piussi (Florence: Giuntina, 1997), 201–209; idem, “Aspetti socio-antropologici dei movimenti giovanili Hashomer Ha-tsair e Bnei Akiva,” in Presto apprendere, tardi dimenticare: l’educazione ebraica nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. Anna Maria Piussi (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998), 112–36. See also Schwarz, After Mussolini, 83–92.
74.
On “Generation 1967,” see Simoni, “Gli ebrei italiani e lo Stato di Israele,” esp. 57–66. See also HaMitnadev / The Volunteer, 1, Tammuz 5727 – July 1967, 8 for a comparative table of Jews volunteering divided by national provenance. The largest group came from the UK (1400) followed by South America (1200); South Africa (860); France (800); USA (500); Canada (300); Belgium (285); Switzerland, Austria, Spain, and Germany (262); Australia (150); Scandinavia (135); the Netherlands (90). See also “The Volunteers’ Convention,” HaMitnadev / The Volunteer 3, Tishri 5728 – October 1967: 1.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Marcella Simoni

Authors

Marcella Simoni
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcella Simoni .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, NY, USA
Francesca Bregoli
University College London, London, United Kingdom
Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti
University of Genova, Genova, Italy
Guri Schwarz

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Simoni, M. (2018). Young Italian Jews in Israel, and Back: Voices from a Generation (1945–1953). In: Bregoli, F., Ferrara degli Uberti, C., Schwarz, G. (eds) Italian Jewish Networks from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89405-8_9

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89405-8_9
Published: 27 July 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89404-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89405-8
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics