Author: Simon Levis Sullam
In this brief gripping revisionist history of Italy’s role in the Holocaust, Simon Levis Sullam presents an unforgettable account of how ordinary Italians actively participated in the deportation of Italy’s Jews between 1943 and 1945.
While most historians have long described Italians as relatively protective of Jews during this time, The Italian Executioners tells a very different story, recounting in vivid detail the shocking events of a period during which Italians set in motion almost half the arrests that sent their Jewish compatriots to Auschwitz, says a review on the Princeton University Press website.
With a historian’s rigor and a novelist’s gift for scene-setting, Levis Sullam dismantles the seductive myth of the “good Italians” who sheltered Jews from harm. In collaboration with the Nazis, and with different degrees of involvement, the Italians were guilty of genocide.
The book focuses heavily on the era of the Republic of Salò, the German-backed fascist state that existed in Italy from 1943 until the Allies and Italian partisans toppled it in 1945.
