An Italian-Jewish secondary schoolteacher was given a one-month suspended sentence and fined 200,000 lire ($325) after she was found guilty in a libel action filed by the publishers of a textbook she had charged was “apologetic” toward fascism.
The schoolteacher, Ada Dellatore, a former partisan and victim of fascist persecution during the Second World War, had addressed a letter to the publisher of a textbook used in her school, complaining that the book supplied a distorted interpretation of fascism which might appear to students as an apology for dictatorship forbidden by postwar Italian law. She also requested a revision of the misleading chapters. The publisher then filed a libel suit against the teacher.
In deciding on the case, the court ruled that the textbook did not contain an apology for fascism. The teacher announced that she would appeal the ruling to a higher court.
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