An Italian priest who was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp because of his efforts to save Jews during World War II was recently beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. Father Giuseppe Girotti, whom Yad Vashem declared a Righteous Among the Nations in 1995, was beatified April 26 at a ceremony in the town of…
Beppe Grillo, an Italian comic turned politician, refused to apologize for his parody of a Primo Levi poem about the Holocaust to criticize Italy’s government and political system. Italian-Jewish leader Renzo Gattegna called the parody on Grillo’s blog an “obscenity.” Grillo, who heads the anti-establishment Five Stars movement, paraphrased “If this Is a Man,” which…
I’m not usually the type of person who goes in for reality TV shows. Especially not when they revolve around singing competitions, and especially not when one of their singers’ performances becomes an overnight Internet sensation, to be endlessly posted and reposted on social media. So why did I feel compelled to watch a Sicilian…
Anti-Semitism in Europe is, once again, making headlines. In Paris, crowds sang, “Jews, France is not yours” at an anti-government protest last month. In Rome, a right-wing extremist mailed three pig heads to major Jewish sites, and Italy had its own anti-government protest — complete with anti-Semitic slogans — a couple of months ago. Plus,…
Volunteers spent hours placing sandbags and protective sheets to protect the Spanish Synagogue and the Rome Jewish Museum, fearing flooding from the swollen Tiber River. Both are located below street level in Rome’s main synagogue complex on the bank of the Tiber River. The Rome Jewish community news site reported that 40 volunteers from the…
Milan — Today, many European countries — including Germany, Italy and the UK — are observing the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day. What makes this particular Holocaust Remembrance Day peculiar in Italy is the fact that quite a few public intellectuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have called for its abolition. Well, that and the fact…
Boxes containing the head of a pig were sent to Rome’s main synagogue, the Israeli embassy in Rome and a museum showing an exhibition on the Holocaust. The packages, sent via a courier service, were delivered Friday, just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day. All three packages were turned over to Italy’s special terrorism and…
Special meetings are being held this week to discuss increasingly sharp political tensions within the Italian Jewish community centered on differing attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East. The meetings were called in the wake of an incident on Jan. 14, in which Jewish protesters disrupted a panel discussion of a book on the left…
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