Benevolence and Betrayal

In Italy Jews and fascists coexisted as nowhere else - there were even Jewish members of the Italian Fascist Party. Both before and during the war, the experience of Jews in Italy was a strange mixture of sympathy and brutal persecution, benevolence and betrayal. Through the stories of five Jewish families, this book recreates the historical and social background of the period in which Jews confidently believed in their safety and comfort as unimagined disaster approached.