How did Italy treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. Italy's Jews experienced a century of dramatic changes, from emancipation in 1848, to the 1938 Racial Laws, wartime refuge in America and Palestine, and the rehabilitation of Holocaust survivors. This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

How did Italy treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. Italy's Jews experienced a century of dramatic changes, from emancipation in 1848, to the 1938 Racial Laws, wartime refuge in America and Palestine, and the rehabilitation of Holocaust survivors. This cultural and social history draws on a wealth of unexplored sources, including original interviews and unpublished memoirs.

"Literature of the Holocaust" courses, whether taught in high schools or at universities, necessarily cover texts from a broad range of international contexts. Instructors are required, regardless of their own disciplinary training, to become comparatists and discuss all works with equal expertise. This books offers analyses of the ways in which representations of the Holocaust-whether in text, film, or material culture-are shaped by national context, providing a valuable pedagogical source in terms of both content and methodology. As memory yields to post-memory, nation of origin plays a larger role in each re-telling, and the chapters in this book explore this notion covering well-known texts like Night (Hungary), Survival in Auschwitz (Italy), MAUS (United States), This Way to the Gas (Poland), and The Reader (Germany), while also introducing lesser-known representations from countries like Argentina or Australia.