Today is the anniversary of a dark page - perhaps the darkest - in Italian history: the entry into force of the first racial laws. In fact, on 7 September 1938 the Royal Decree n. 1381, entitled "Provisions against foreign Jews”, which adapted Italian legislation to that of Nazi Germany, where anti-Semitic laws had already been passed in 1933, the year of Hitler's rise to power. The content of the decree was announced 11 days later in Trieste by Benito Mussolini.
As early as the autumn of 1938, Jewish students they were excluded from Italian public schools. This provision was launched in Italy a few days before Nazi Germany.
In the same days they were also removed nine senators of Jewish origin: Salvatore Barzilai, Enrico Catellani, Adriano Diena, Isaia Levi, Achille Loria, Teodoro Mayer, Elio Morpurgo, Salvatore Segrè Sartorio and Vito Volterra.
The term "racial laws" identifies a full-bodied set of provisions, which do not end with those passed on 7 September. For example, it was the decree-law of 17 November 1938 that forbade people of the Jewish confession to work as employees of public bodies, state and para-state companies.
A month earlier, on October 16, 96 university professors tenured Italians had been identified as Jews and suspended from service. The same fate also befell a over 200 researchers and scholars Jews who practiced free teaching.
In 1939, the Minister of Justice Arrigo Solmi asked everyone the magistrates a declaration of non-belonging to the Jewish race to verify "the racial purity of the entire apparatus". Previously, similar checks had been carried out in schools on teachers e and students.
According to the scholar Guido Neppi Modona, a former judge of the Constitutional Court, none of the approximately 4.200 magistrates in service at the time in any way distanced themselves from the provision, nor did they refuse to respond to the request to declare their racial affiliation. Furthermore, no one has shown solidarity with colleagues removed from service.
The anti-Semitic legislation also included many other prohibitions. Here are some:
- the prohibition of marriage between Italians and Jews;
- the prohibition for all public administrations and private companies of a public nature, such as banks and insurance companies, to employ Jews;
- the prohibition for foreign Jews to move to Italy;
- the ban on carrying out the profession of notary and journalist and strong limitations for all the so-called intellectual professions.
- the prohibition for Jews to employ domestic workers of the Aryan race.
The racial laws were repealed with the royal decree-law n. 25 and 26 of 20 January 1944, issued during the Southern Kingdom.
