On Myth Making and Nation Building in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume 36:1

On Myth Making and Nation Building: The Genesis of the “Myth of the Good Italian,” 1943–1947

Guri Schwarz examines Italian society’s self-rehabilitation in the immediate postwar years through the “myth of the good Italian,” who did everything in order to help Jews during the Holocaust. Not only did Italian society spread this myth, but the Italian Jewish community itself also promoted it. Schwarz shows how this myth developed as part of the larger myth that Fascism had somehow never been popular in Italy. Schwarz’s analysis of why both Italian and Jewish leaders in Italy sought to promote this myth raises interesting issues regarding the postwar rehabilitation of Europe and its surviving Jews.