Jewish Women in the Early Italian Women's Movement, 1861-1945

This book is the first epoch-spanning study on Jewish participation in the Italian women's movement, focussing in a transnational perspective on the experience of Italian-Jewish protagonists in Liberal Italy, during the First World War and the Fascist dictatorship until 1945. Drawing on ego-documents, contemporary journals and Jewish community archives, as well as records by the police and public authorities, it examines the tensions within the emancipation process between participation and exclusion. The book argues that the racial laws from 1938 did not represent the sudden end of an idyllic integration, but rather the climax of a long-term development. Social marginalization, the persecution of Jewish rights, and the assault on Jewish lives during fascism are analysed distinctly from the perspective of Jewish women.  In spite of their significant influence on the transnational orientation of the Italian women's movement, their emancipation as women and Jews remained incomplete.

Ruth Nattermann is Associate Professor of Contemporary European History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany.