The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

The refugee problem became more complex on July 14 when the Benito
Mussolini Government issued a ten point racial doctrine, constructed by Fascist
university professors in the report “Fascism and the Problems of Race,” that was similar
in content to the Nazi Aryan world view. The new Italian canon proclaimed the biologic
superiority of Aryans and claimed the right to declare that the Italian non-Jewish “race”
was itself Aryan. A “pure Italian race now exists” and the “conception of racialism in
Italy must be essentially Italian and Aryan-Nordic in trend.” It was time, the authors
believed, for the Italian people to proclaim their racial consciousness. 6
Il Duce asserted
that it was necessary for the Fascist Party to deal with the “racial problem” confronting
the nation that threatened the “health of the race that will make history.” The press called
for stricter legislation which would avoid the “catastrophic plague of the crossbred, the
creation…of a hybrid race” that would promote “disintegration and revolt,” Communism
and Masonry. For Italy to assume its rightful place in the sun the people needed to have a
“strong pride [and] a clear omnipresent knowledge of the race.” However, unlike their
German Aryan brethren Fascists believed that “to discriminate is not to persecute” but the
proportion of Jews to true Italians would have to be strictly controlled. 7
The Jewish or
half-Jewish population in 1933 was estimated to be 57,000 out of a total population of
45,000,000. 8
6 Schneiderman, ed., American Jewish Committee Annual Report 1939-1940, 629.
7 Tampa Daily Times, July 14, 1938, 5; “To Discriminate Is Not to Persecute,” Corriere Della Sera
(Milan), August 5, 1938 available from
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/defendrace_italy.html; Internet; accessed June 18,
2010;
8 Schneiderman, ed., American Jewish Committee Annual Report 1939-1940, 629-630..
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