In 1945, at the end of World War II, the realization of the Holocaust - that is, the systematic state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators - was difficult for many people to comprehend and, moreover, accept. Those who visited concentration camps after the war in Eastern Europe were confronted by things that, in the words of United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower, beggar description.1 What so shocked those observers initially in 1945 was in fact only a small part of the vast killing program established by the Nazis in Europe. Not until much later was the magnitude of the Holocaust understood: two millennia of Jewish civilization in Europe had come to an end. Italy was one of Nazi Germanys allies during the war; yet, the vehement and obsessive anti-Semitic racial ideology of Nazism gained far less appreciation in Italy than it did in Germany. For several reasons, which shall be explored here, the nature of the Holocaust in Italy differed from elsewhere in Europe. .
Susan Zuccotti, whose historical analysis provides valuable insight into the Holocaust in Italy, purports an interesting dichotomy of questions. After the German occupation of Italy in 1943, the puppet regime that was in place continued to provide full cooperation with the Nazis. In November 1943, the political manifesto of this new regime declared that the Italian Jews were enemy aliens. In the following month, a police order called for the internment of all Jews. Adolf Eichmann, in charge of the Final Solution, sent highly experienced teams of Jew hunters to Italy (as he did to all occupied areas). Thousands of Italian Fascists, whatever their reasons might have been, assisted the Nazis in making Europe Judenrein - that is, free of Jews. Of the approximately 45,200 Jews living in Italy during the German occupation, about 85 percent lived to see liberation. Considering the ferocious determination with which the Holocaust proceeded, why is this relative percentage of survivors so high? .
