Dr. Renzo began this investigation for her PhD dissertation on the topic in 2017. Over the last two years, as a postdoctoral fellow in Jewish History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, she conducted her research on Jewish displaced children after the Holocaust, exploring the policy of humanitarian organizations and the strategies of the Jewish Agency in rehabilitating and resettling them.
The research fellowship at Yad Vashem allowed Dr. Renzo to give voice to two overlooked groups of Jewish DPs: the ultra-Orthodox ones, and the so-called "non-Palestine-oriented" ones. “For decades, historiography and collective memory consolidated the image of postwar Italy as the 'Gate to Zion,' emphasizing almost exclusively the role of this country as a staging area for the Jewish refugees’ illegal departure to Eretz Israel (British Mandatory Palestine),” explained Dr. Renzo, who gave the Annual Lecture of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies. "Instead, from my research Italy emerges as a key military, political and humanitarian site for Jewish survivors longing to start a new life after the war, and not necessarily only in Eretz Israel."
Working with a wide variety of sources – institutional reports and correspondence produced by the rescue networks as well as the oral and written testimonies of Jewish DPs – Dr. Renzo discussed the two different waves of refugees that arrived in Italy during and after the war. The first were those Jews from German, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia who had fled their countries during the German occupation, and arrived in Italy before 1945. These "old refugees" were aided by soldiers of the Jewish Brigade of the British army, as well as chaplains from the Allied forces – who presented immigration to Eretz Israel as the best answer to their situation, and set up hachsharot, or training centers, to prepare the refugees, and especially the youth, for aliya.
The second group, the so-called "new refugees," reached Italy mainly via the Alps with the help of the Bricha rescue organization after the end of the war. At this stage, international refugee agencies and Jewish organizations became responsible for the care, rehabilitation and resettlement of these displaced, traumatized and disoriented Jews. The UN agencies, in collaboration with the JDC and the emissaries of the representatives of the Zionist youth movement from the Yishuv, set up Hebrew schools, vocational training and recreational activities for the Jewish DPs in Italy.
Notwithstanding the drastically limited aliya policy of the British Mandate, Zionist propaganda (especially from socialist youth movements) predominated the refugee camps of Italy. In this context, ultra-Orthodox Jewish DPs – feeling discriminated and non-represented – started to reorganize their Chassidic life with the help of Rabbi Leibel Kutner, a survivor from Gur, Poland. “In order to establish a religious public life and religious educational institutions in the refugee camps, they asked the Jewish Agency to send emissaries of Agudat Israel and Mizrahi, who arrived in Italy only at the end of 1945.”
Dr. Renzo concluded her lecture with the events following the establishment of the State of Israel, and the subsequent mass migration from the DP camps in Europe. “After May 1948, a few hundred Jewish DPs in Italy changed their mind regarding aliyah,” Dr. Renzo said. "Two main factors influenced this change. On the one hand, rumours regarding the hard life in the newly established state discouraged some from planning aliyah. On the other, the United States was about to implement the DP Bill, a law that provided for the admission to the US of around 400,000 European DPs for permanent residence. Many DPs still in refugee camps saw this as a better opportunity for resettlement."
Dr.Renzo concludes:
“The experience of the Holocaust survivors in Italy is often represented as a collective experience, Instead, the sources I have found in Yad Vashem confirmed that they came from different backgrounds, had different needs in the refugee camps, and held different goals for the future. Stuck in these sites of transit, struggling between their traumatic past and the desire to start a new life, the Jewish DPs in Italy became the protagonists of a fascinating story of rebirth and hope."
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 91.
