An official communique revealing that 1,559 Jews from Germany, Austria and Poland had registered with Milan police authorities during the 20 week period immediately following anschluss furnished fuel tonight for an anti-Semitic outburst throughout the Italian press.
At the same time, Jews had the word of an article published by National Education Minister Giuseppe Bottai’s newspaper Critica Fascista that Italian Fascism, while it must make a distinction between Semites and “pure Italians,” has no intention of waging a campaign of racial persecution.
This gave Italy’s relatively small Jewish population (44,000) little cause for comfort, however, since official sentiment as revealed in the press showed a rising tide of anti-Semitic feeling.
“The Jewish Descent on Milan,” and “A Danger, or the Jewish Immigration to Milan” were the headlines under which newspapers reported the official statistics on the number of foreign Jews who have recently sought refuge in the northern city.
Italian Protestants drew the ire of the newspaper Regime Fascista in renewed attacks on factions disapproving the new racist and “Aryan” policies of the Government.
Taking as its target those Protestants who approved Pope Plus XI’s speech condemning the new doctrine, the mouthpiece of Roberto farinacci, leading Fascist anti-Semite, declared:
“La Luce, evangelist organ, up till now has shed warm tears for the sons of Israel, to whom, it maintains, humanity owes everything. The speech of the Pope also affected Italian Protestants, who promptly declared they were opposed to the racist “Theory”.
The Protestants’ clarification of their attitude in this important issue “will permit us to follow their actions a little more closely,” Regime Fascista warned.
Declaring that the Protestants’ right to worship was recognized in the Church-State Concordat thanks to the Fascists, Regime Fascista added:
“Perhaps these gentlemen of La Luce hope to obtain tacit consent for their proselyting work. We believe they are in error, even if, after various speeches, the impossible seems possible. In any case, we must congratulate Mgr. Pizzardo (Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo, Papal Under-Secretary of State), leader of the Catholic action, who inspired the famous speech and succeeded in confronting Fascist Catholics with a united front grouping atheists, Communists, Masons, Jews and Protestants.”
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.
