Italy to Restrict Jews to 1-1.000 Ratio in All Spheres

Government plans for restriction of Jews’ activities to their ratio in the population — 1 in 1,000 — tonight threatened Italy’s 44,000 Jews with drastic reduction of their economic and cultural role in the life of the Fascist Empire. While insisting that no campaign of persecution was intended, the Foreign Ministry organ, Informazione Diplomatica, officially announced that Jews must and will be required to accept a lesser status commensurate with their numbers, which will be checked by a special census.

The article, which showed traces of Premier Benito Mussolini’s style, asserted in defense of Italy’s racist program that the Jews themselves, self-designated as “the chosen people,” were a prime example of “complete, stubborn and ferocious racism.” Strong measures are necessary, the Foreign Ministry organ contended, in order to avoid “creation of a bastard race, neither European nor African, which would foment disintegration.”

Further light on the steps contemplated “to protect the Italian race” was expected tomorrow with the first issue of the new review, “Difensa Della Raza” (Defense of the Race). The importance attached to the publication by the Government was indicated by instructions sent from the Fascist Party secretariat to all local units ordering the widest possible distribution of the first number.

INFORMAZIONE DIPLOMATICA’S STATEMENT

Informazione Diplomatica’s statement began with a strenuous effort to prove that Italy’s “Aryan” theories are neither new nor an imitation of other doctrine. Those who allege that Italy has borrowed its ideas from abroad, the article said, are motivated “by superficial knowledge of the facts and in certain cases by bad faith.”

“In reality, Italian racism dates from 1919,” the article continued. “Mussolini, in his speech to the Party Congress at Rome in November, 1921 — we repeat 1921 — said: ‘I hear it is said that Fascism is concerned with the problem of race. Fascists must concern themselves with the health of the race, of which history is made.’

“If the problem remained in a latent state for some years, it was because other problems were more urgent and had to be resolved. But the conquest of the Empire raised to first rank those problems which in their entirety are called racial. to avoid the catastrophic plague of mongrelism, that is to say, creation of a bastard race neither European nor African which would foment disintegration, the severe laws proclaimed and applied by Fascism do not suffice.

“To discriminate does not mean to persecute. This is addressed to the over-abundant Jews of Italy and other countries who hurl their futile lamentations toward the sky while passing with their well-known rapidity from pride to senseless panic. The Fascist government has no special plan of persecution against the Jews. The question is altogether different. Jews in Italy on metropolitan soil number 44,000, according to Jewish statistics which will, however, be checked by a special census soon. The proportion would thus be one Jew to 1,000 Italians.

“It is clear that henceforth the participation of Jews in the total life of the State must and will be proportionate to this ratio. Nobody will contest the Fascist State’s right to do this, the Jews still less than others. As evident from the recent manifesto of the rabbis of Italy, the Jews were always and everywhere apostles of the most complete, stubborn and ferocious — and, from a certain point of view, admirable — racism. They always regarded themselves as belonging to another blood and another race. They proclaimed themselves the chosen people and constantly furnished proof of their racial solidarity above all frontiers.

“We do not wish to speak here of the historical equivalent, proved during the past 20 years in the life of Europe, between Judaism, Bolshevism and free masonry.

“There is no doubt then that the climate is favorable for Italian racism. And there is even less doubt that it will become, by the coordinated and resolute action of all organs of the regime, the spiritual heritage of our people, the fundamental base of our State, the element of security for our Empire.”

PRESS COMMENT ON STATEMENT

The entire press commented extensively on the forthcoming anti-Semitic measures. Echong the Foreign Office organ, Lavoro Fascista particularly argued that since “the Jewish element participates in “world anti-fascist agitation it is not just for 44,000 to exercise an influence disproportional with their numerical importance.”

In Giornale d’Italia, the authoritative Fascist commentator Virginio Gayda devoted five columns to quotations from Il Duce’s speeches, the first going back to 1917, designed to prove the age of the current doctrines.

The majority of the newspapers repeatedly stressed that the Jews were not going to be persecuted. “The defense of the race,” said la Tribuna, “has nothing to do with religious or spiritual problems. It is essentially determined by the conscience of a great people, which is and feels itself pure and wishes to remain so.”

More moderate newspapers, which previously had limited themselves to publishing philosophical statements on racial theory, today began to imitate the radical publications which initiated the anti-Jewish campaign. The empires of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon were ruined by the diversity of peoples composing them, said Piccolo in an article entitled “Race and State.” A dismembered Germany, on the other hand, easily returned to unity as a result of racial unity, the same newspaper declared.

“The doctrine is laid down, and the time has now come to apply it,” Piccolo continued. “Italians could and should remain Italians. The exodus of the pariahs of Israel from Central Europe and Palestine toward Italian lands would be an attack on the unity and purity of the race.”