Gianluca Fantoni – författare

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate.Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice.Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe.

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the role of cinema in the communication strategy of the Italian Communist party (the PCI). It examines the entire period during which the party had a systematic and organized approach to cinematographic production, starting with the early experiments in 1946 and concluding with the closure of PCI film company Unitelefilm at the end of the 1970s. Its analysis sheds light on a range of issues, such as the relationship between the party and Italian intellectuals, the Stalinist imprint of the Italian Communist Party and the historical significance of the Salerno turn, the PCI’s relationship with the student movements in 1968 and 1977, and the PCI’s response to the rise in political violence in the 1970s. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that cinema was essential to the PCI’s propaganda effort.