— Edith Bruck, a well-known Italian Jewish writer and former concentration camp inmate, has sued the “Enciclopedia Curcio” for disseminating racist slander in its definition of Jews. The publication defines a Jew as “A person who is stingy, greedy, sordid and usurious.”
Bruck, who is of Hungarian origin, took legal action after reading a letter in the Rome daily La Republica from a group of Italian Jews who accused the Enciclopedia Curcio of slandering the Jewish people. The offensive definition includes an invented verb, “Jewishize” (Ebraizzare) which it says means “To infuse principles, sentiments and ways of life that are typical of the Jewish race.”
Bruck objected to the word “race” instead of “people”, as a familiar feature of “an anti-Semitic cultural tradition.” The encyclopedia also lists “Zionism” as a synonym for “Judaism” which, according to Bruck, perpetrates an “historical falsehood which has been used mostly to mask new forms of anti-Semitism.”
Bruck observed that these definitions are of serious import because an encyclopedia is normally regarded as an “instrument for the diffusion of culture and correct information.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
