A 17-year-old Jewish boy was beaten up by a gang of neo-Fascist youths last week and was arrested by police who did not bother his assailants, it was disclosed today. Judge Sergio Piperno, president of the Association of Italian-Jewish communities, has protested against the “unjust arrest.” Police dismissed the incident as a “boys’ game.”
The victim, Piero Morpurgo, was attacked as he was leaving school in the predominantly Jewish Monte Verde quarter of Rome last Thursday. He was called a “dirty Jew” and beaten until police intervened. There was no indication as to why he was arrested. Earlier last week neo-Fascist youths announced that they would beat up Jewish students at the school to “set an example.”
The weekly, Vie Nuove, published a copy of a leaflet distributed by neo-Fascists containing the names and addresses of 15 families in Treviso which they said they intended to attack and to boycott. The leaflet was illustrated with a swastika. It said, “Hitler is not dead. Beware bourgeois, beware proletarians, beware Jews. Sieg Heil.”
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