Our Daily News Letter

(By Our Rome Correspondent, D. Kleinlerer)

The remains of the most historical ghetto in the world, that of Rome, are about to disappear, as a result of an order of the city officials. Thus what the rulers of Rome erected centuries ago to pen the Jew and huruillate him is to be destroyed by their own descendants, the modern rulers of the city, and in a sense this will constitute the fulfillment of historical justice. OE course, the decision to demolish the ancient ghetto quarter is based on more practical, if less subtle, motives. It has been found that the narrow crooked streets of this section are devoid of every condition of sanitation and present a permanent menace to the health of the people living in them and to the rest of the city.

Already pick-ax and crowbar are at work tearing down the walls and dilapidated houses in the winding tortuous gloomy alleys, where once Italian Jewry lived and pulsated. The newspapers of Rome had conducted a campaign for months and months urging the city to take this step and now it has come about. With the disappearance of this ghetto another concrete evidence of a sad chapter of Jewish history will be eradicated and Jewish tourists will no longer be able to glimpse into the past, to see the very streets and houses where their ancestors dwelt, strove and suffered martyrdom under Popes and emperors hundreds of years ago.

The Jewish ghetto of Rome, which was definitely established by Pope Paul IV and was entered on July 26, 1556, though it can be traced historically to the time of the Roman emperor Augustus who, giving ear to the anti-Jewish propaganda in his day, decided to “segregate” the Jews, has the “distinction” of surviving later than any other ghetto in Europe. Situated between the Via del Pianto and the Ponte del Quatro Capi, on the right side of the Tiber, it consisted of a few dirty unhealthful streets which were painfully overcrowded and moreover, were annually flooded by the Tiber. The oppressive and humiliating restrictions issued from time to time in regard to the life in the ghetto and which were alternately abolished and reimposed, were renewed in the cruel legislation of Pope Pius VI in 1775. In 1814, during the brief Napoleonic rule in Italy, Pius VII permitted some Jews to live outside the ghetto, but when Cardinal Rivorali came into power, the old decrees were revived. In 1847 Pius IX decided to do away with the ghetto completely but the reactionary movement of 1848 again reestablished the restrictions. In 1870 the Italian army marched into the city and soon afterward Victor Immanuel fulfilled the request of the Jews by definitely and finally abolishing the ghetto. Today, fifty-six years since that moment, the last remains of this tragical landmark in Jewish history are being demolished forever.