Il 7 September of the 1938 the Royal Legislative Decree number 1.381 was promulgated in Italy, containing "Provisions against foreign Jews”. It was never converted into law, but its provisions were taken up and definitively approved with a subsequent text (Rdl number 1.728 of 17 November 1938).
The decree which turns 84 today was made up of 5 articles and established the following aberrations:
- foreign Jews are forbidden "to establish permanent residences in the Kingdom, in Libya and in the Aegean Possessions";
- a Jew is to be considered “one who was born of parents both of the Jewish race, even if he professes a religion other than the Jewish one”;
- the concessions of Italian citizenship "in any case made to Jewish foreigners after 1919 January XNUMX are understood to be revoked to all effects";
- Jewish foreigners who entered Italy after 1919 January XNUMX were obliged to leave the country "within six months of the date of publication" of the decree;
- Disputes "that could arise in the application of this decree-law will be resolved, case by case, with a decree of the Minister for the Interior", or by Benito Mussolini, "issued in agreement with the Ministers who may be interested".
The corpus of racial laws
The decree of 7 September 1938 was one of the first racial laws of Italian Fascism, which in this field passed just under 40 provisions between July 1938 and February 1945. Only two days before the text of which the anniversary three other Royal Legislative Decrees had arrived, numbers 1.390, 1.531 and 1.539: the first "for the defense of the race in the Fascist school", the second for the "Transformation of the Central Demographic Office into the Directorate General for Demography and Race ”, the third to establish, within the Ministry of the Interior, the “Superior Council for Demography and Race”.
The Manifesto of Fascist Racism
All these measures had been preceded by a statement entitled "Fascism and the problem of race", issued by the political secretariat of the National Fascist Party on 25 July 1938 and already published nine days earlier anonymously in the Giornale d'Italia. Written by the young anthropologist Guido Landra on Mussolini's orders and also known as the "Manifesto of Racist Scientists" (it was signed by 10 scholars in all), the text represented a sort of decalogue of fascist racism. Inside you can read phrases such as "the population of present-day Italy is mostly of Aryan origin and its Aryan civilization", "there is now a pure Italian race" and "Jews do not belong to the Italian race".
