Between Faith and Nation: Italian Jewish Soldiers in the Great War

Wilcox, Vanda

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-54896-2_9

Vanda Wilcox³

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Abstract

When Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1915, it proclaimed that its cause was that of redemptive nationalism, a claim which resonated strongly with many in the Italian Jewish community. The Jewish officers and men serving in the Italian army mostly embraced a Risorgimento-inspired understanding of the war inflected through specifically Jewish ideas about nationhood. Using a range of sources including the records of the military rabbinate, this chapter explores the experiences and attitudes of Italian Jewish servicemen at war as well as the army’s policies and practices with regard to Judaism. The Jewish contribution to the Italian war effort in the First World War offers important insights into the ways in which Italian Jews negotiated their religious and national identities.

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Notes

1.
Reported on the Ministry of Defence official website (accessed 27 August 2015). All translations author’s own http://www.difesa.it/Primo_Piano/Pagine/OmaggioaiCadutiallaSinagogadiRoma.aspx.
2.
Stefano Caviglia (1996), L’identità salvata: gli ebrei di Roma tra fede e nazione: 1870–1938 (Bari, Laterza), 168–169.
3.
This link between faith community and commemoration was relatively unusual in Italy: very few war memorials were erected in Catholic churches in Italy (owing to the Church’s complex relationship with the Italian state and the war itself).
4.
For a thorough introduction to this debate, see Cristina Bettin (2010), Italian Jews from Emancipation to the Racial Laws (New York, Palgrave Macmillan).
5.
Dan Segre (1995), ‘The Emancipation of the Jews in Italy’, in Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds. Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press), 206–237.
6.
On the ‘Jewish renaissance’ elsewhere see Michael Brenner (1996), The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven, Yale University Press); Inka Bertz (1999), ‘Jewish Renaissance—Jewish Modernism’, in Emily D. Bilski, ed. Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890–1918 (Berkeley, University of California Press), 164–187.
7.
Cristina Bettin (2005), ‘Identity and Identification: Jewish Youth in Italy 1870–1938’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 4:3, 323–345.
8.
Simonetta Della Seta Torrefranca (1993), ‘Identità religiosa e identità nazionale nell’ebraismo italiano del Novecento’, in Italia judaica: gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, 1870–1945: atti del IV convegno internazionale, Siena 12–16 giugno 1989 (Rome, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici), 265–272, 272.
9.
Mario Toscano (1993), ‘Gli ebrei italiani e la prima guerra mondiale (1915–1918): tra crisi religiosa e fremiti patriotici’, in Italia judaica: gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, 1870–1945: atti del IV convegno internazionale, Siena 12–16 giugno 1989 (Rome, Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici), 285–302, 286–287.
10.
Renzo De Felice (2001), The Jews in Fascist Italy: A History (New York, Enigma Books), 8–11.
11.
Ilaria Pavan (2006), ‘Cingi al fianco, o prode, la spada’. I rabbini italiani di fronte alla Grande Guerra’, Rivista di storia del Cristianesimo 2, 335–358.
12.
Il Vessillo Israelitico, 1915.
13.
Toscano (1993), ‘Gli ebrei italiani e la prima guerra mondiale’, 288.
14.
Roberto Morozzo della Rocca (1980), La Fede e la Guerra: cappellani militari e preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome, Edizioni Studium), 8–9.
15.
‘Nota tecnica’ by Giorgio Rochat, 15–16, in Pierluigi Briganti (2009), Il contributo militare degli ebrei italiani alla Grande Guerra, 1915-1918 (Turin, S. Zamorani).
16.
Alberto Rovighi (1999), I militari di origine ebraica nel primo secolo di vita dello stato italiano (Rome, Stato maggiore dell’esercito, Ufficio storico), 8–9.
17.
Briganti (2009), Il contributo militare degli ebrei italiani, 33–34. At least 118 of these officers would go on to be killed in action or after capture while fighting as partisans with the Italian Resistance in 1943–1945. Rovighi (1999), I militari di origine ebraica passim.
18.
Rovighi (1999), I militari di origine ebraica, 17–18.
19.
Briganti (2009), Il contributo militare degli ebrei italiani, 154–155, 159, 249–251.
20.
Full data for comparison in Italia. Ministero della Guerra. Ufficio Statistico (1927), L’ordine militare di Savoia durante la guerra 1915–1918 (Rome, Provveditorato Generale dello Stato).
21.
Felice Tedeschi (1921), Gli Israeliti italiani nella guerra 1915–1918 (Turin, Ferruccio Servi).
22.
Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane (UCEI), Centro Bibliografico, Archivio Consorzio (AC), b.27 f.150; b.25 f.125/2; b.27 f.125/3; b.27 f.125/1. A number of individuals identified in the UCEI archive are not found in Briganti’s published database.
23.
Ufficio Statistico (1927), Statistica dello sforzo militare italiano nella guerra mondiale (Rome, Provveditorato Generale dello stato).
24.
Ilaria Pavan (2008), ‘I rabbini italiani e la prima guerra mondiale’, in Alberto Caviglion, Lucetta Levi Momigliano, and Isabella Massabò Ricci, eds. Una storia del Novecento: il rabbino Dario Disegni (1878–1967): Torino, 10 dicembre 2008 - 30 gennaio 2009 (Turin, Archivio ebraico B. e A. Terracini), 139–40.
25.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.150 Corr. dal Maggio 1915 al Marzo 1917: Ministero della Guerra Segretario Generale Div. Stato Maggiore, sezione 3. N. 2367.
26.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.150 Corr. Dal Maggio 1915 al Marzo 1917.
27.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.150 Corr. Dal Maggio 1915 al Marzo 1917; letter dated 15 June 1915.
28.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.154 Corrispondenza Varia della Dir. del Rabb. Mil., letters from April and May 1917.
29.
See, for example, Letters from Rabbi of IV Army, Padova, November–December 1917, UCEI, AC, b.27 f.151; Corr. dal Luglio al Dicembre 1917.
30.
In accordance with Italian archival privacy regulations, private individuals are identified only by initials.
31.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.152 Corr. Varia di militari; see letters dated 11 November 1916 and 11 August 1917.
32.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.154 Corrispondenza Varia della Dir. del Rabb. Mil., letters from Rodolfo Levi.
33.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.152 Corr. Varia di militari.
34.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.152 Corr. Varia di militari. (Later when C.P. was killed in action, his family contacted Sacerdoti to request help in bringing his body home for appropriate burial.)
35.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.153; b.27 f.156 sf. 3/sf. 4/ sf. 6.
36.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.152 Corr. Varia di militari.
37.
UCEI, AC, b.27, f.149, report from Lt. Rabbi Ugo Massiach [b.1890] to Angelo Sacerdoti.
38.
UCEI, AC, b.27, f.149. HQ of 7th army sent out orders to all Jewish soldiers to gather in Brescia where the health services had put rooms at their disposal in the local branch of the Society for Garibaldians and Veterans, which also successfully held Rosh Hashanah services. Again, a close working relationship between the rabbinate, the army authorities and local patriotic institutions is revealed; on other occasions the nearest ‘Casa del Soldato’—an official army leisure space for soldiers—was used for religious events.
39.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.155 Rabbinato Militare IV & VI armata, 1916–1917–1919, typed copy of Levi’s speech.
40.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.155 Rabbinato Militare IV & VI armata, 1916–1917–1919.
41.
Pavan (2008), ‘I rabbini italiani’, 138–139.
42.
L. Ravenna (1916), ‘Guerra e Religione’, Il Vessillo 15–30, 543.
43.
Cited in Toscano (1993), ‘Gli ebrei italiani e la prima guerra mondiale’, 293–294.
44.
I am grateful to Edward Madigan for his observations on this point.
45.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.152 Corr. Varia di militari.
46.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.154 Corrispondenza Varia della Dir. del Rabb. Mil. The chaplains complained a great deal in their private correspondence about their personal circumstances (such as the provision of leave and the duration of service) and about Sacerdoti’s management of the Jewish chaplaincy as a whole, but almost never about the army’s treatment of Jewish servicemen or the provision of religious support.
47.
Pavan (2008), ‘I rabbini italiani’, 140.
48.
UCEI, AC, b.27 f.157 s.f.4—1918.
49.
Briganti (2009), Il contributo militare degli ebrei italiani, 237.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Gisele Levy at the Centro Bibliografico of the Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane, Rome, whose assistance in conducting this research was invaluable.

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John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Vanda Wilcox

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Vanda Wilcox
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Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
Edward Madigan
Department of History, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK
Gideon Reuveni

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Wilcox, V. (2019). Between Faith and Nation: Italian Jewish Soldiers in the Great War. In: Madigan, E., Reuveni, G. (eds) The Jewish Experience of the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54896-2_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54896-2_9
Published: 28 November 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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