Colonel Ascoli, Jewish army officer in Italy who was dismissed under the racial laws, shot himself dead in front of his regiment in Florence, according to an account published in The English Churchman. The suicide was described as follows by Captain R.M. Stephens of the British army in a letter to the publication:
“Ordered into retirement as a Jew, he was nevertheless allowed to make a farewell speech to the regiment he commanded. At the close, he asked the soldiers — his last command, as he said — always to be ready to die for their country, as he would have been. Then, covering his face with the regimental flag, he drew his revolver and shot himself dead.
No account of the incident was permitted to appear in the Fascist press, the letter stated. Colonel Ascoli was a member of a prominent family, a relative of Admiral Aldo Ascoli, recently dismissed as commander-in-chief of the Italian squadron in the Balearic Islands, and of Professor Ascoli, founder of 30 sanatoriums in Italy.
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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.
