These Thoughts of Mine: Diaries of an Italian Jewish Partisan, January 1940–February 1944

We are what we are: an array of individuals, in part altruistic and in good faith, in part political opportunists, in part soldiers who’ve deserted and fear being deported to Germany, in part driven by the thirst for adventure, in part by a thirst for theft. Men are men... (Emanuele Artom, Partisan Diary, first half of November 1943); Emanuele Artom (Aosta, 1915–Turin, 1944), an Italian Jewish intellectual and a revered figure among Italian Jews, experienced racial persecutions and in 1943 joined the resistance. His diaries, now published for the first time in English, are a precious source for the study of Italian Jewry, of Fascist antisemitism, and of the anti-Fascist resistance. Artom’s first diary, concerning the period from January 1940 to September 1943, is a rich source of information about cultural life in Turin, the development and effects of the racial persecution, the material and psychological consequences of the Allied bombings, and the period between the fall of Mussolini and the beginning of the German occupation (July 25–September 8, 1943). The second diary, from November 1943 to February 23, 1944, concerns his partisan experience. It offers an unmediated and anti-rhetorical representation of the hardships of partisan life, the divisions within the anti-Fascist front, social conflicts, and gender dynamics within the bands, as well as the tensions between local populations and fighters. Furthermore, Artom intensely reflects on the ethics of the resistance and on the value and meaning of violence. As a political commissar and an educator, Artom attributed the utmost importance to nurturing renewed social bonds and a new morality. Thus, he endeavored to teach the unlettered fieldhands that made up the bulk of the partisan bands the basic tenets of liberal democracy. Moreover, his testimony allows us to gauge how the resistance represented a first and fundamental step for the social and political reintegration of persecuted Jews, who—after years of marginalization—were able to play an active role in a collective struggle aimed at the regeneration of the body politic. Emanuele Artom died after enduring atrocious torture at the hands of Fascist and Nazi tormentors. His memory endures among Jewish and non-Jewish Italians, especially—but not solely—in Turin, the city in  which he grew up and spent most of his life.