Simon Levis Sullam – författare

While public intellectuals are typically thought of as inherently nonconformist and critical of established power, in practice many adapt themselves to the views of the majority—particularly in the context of repressive governments and military dictatorships. When the political winds change, such figures often refashion themselves to fit the new paradigm. Ghosts of Fascism follows the trajectories of four Italian intellectuals who, despite their passivity and at times even collaboration with Fascist institutions, became some of postwar Italy's most iconic anti-Fascists: Federico Chabod, a prominent historian of the twentieth century; the jurist Piero Calamandrei, who participated in drafting the Italian democratic constitution; the influential literary critic Luigi Russo, who presided over the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa; and Alberto Moravia, the internationally renowned novelist. Simon Levis Sullam weaves together their histories to show how postwar Italian intellectuals quietly revised their previous political positions, redefining themselves—and their recent pasts—as consistently anti-Fascist.

A gripping revisionist history that shows how ordinary Italians played a central role in the genocide of Italian Jews during the Second World WarIn this gripping revisionist history of Italy’s role in the Holocaust, Simon Levis Sullam presents an unforgettable account of how ordinary Italians actively participated in the deportation of Italy’s Jews between 1943 and 1945, when Mussolini’s collaborationist republic was under German occupation. While most historians have long described Italians as relatively protective of Jews during this time, The Italian Executioners tells a very different story, recounting in vivid detail the shocking events of a period in which Italians set in motion almost half the arrests that sent their Jewish compatriots to Auschwitz.This brief, beautifully written narrative shines a harsh spotlight on those who turned on their Jewish fellow citizens. These collaborators ranged from petty informers to Fascist intellectuals—and their motives ran from greed to ideology. Drawing insights from Holocaust and genocide studies and combining a historian’s rigor with a novelist’s gift for scene-setting, Levis Sullam takes us into Italian cities large and small, from Florence and Venice to Brescia, showing how events played out in each. Re-creating betrayals and arrests, he draws indelible portraits of victims and perpetrators alike.Along the way, Levis Sullam dismantles the seductive popular myth of italiani brava gente—the “good Italians” who sheltered their Jewish compatriots from harm. The result is an essential correction to a widespread misconception of the Holocaust in Italy. In collaboration with the Nazis, and with different degrees and forms of involvement, the Italians were guilty of genocide.

A gripping revisionist history that shows how ordinary Italians played a central role in the genocide of Italian Jews during the Second World WarIn this brief history of Italy's role in the Holocaust, Simon Levis Sullam presents an unforgettable account of how ordinary Italians actively participated in the deportation of Italy's Jews between 1943 and 1945. While most historians have long described Italians as relatively protective of Jews during this time, The Italian Executioners tells a very different story, recounting in vivid detail the shocking events of a period during which Italians set in motion almost half the arrests that sent their Jewish compatriots to Auschwitz. With a historian's rigor and a novelist's gift for scene-setting, Levis Sullam dismantles the seductive myth of the "good Italians" who sheltered Jews from harm. In collaboration with the Nazis, and with different degrees of involvement, the Italians were guilty of genocide.

This controversial and groundbreaking study proposes a compelling reinterpretation of the political thought of one Italy's founding fathers, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), and in the process suggests a new approach to understanding the origins of fascist ideology.

The Bible itself calls the Jewish people ‘a company of nations’, suggesting that difference within Judaism is not a new phenomenon. It has continued throughout Jewish history, and this volume investigates how and why such difference has been tolerated. Drawing on examples from different geographical areas and from ancient times to the present, the contributors consider why Jews sometimes attempt to impose constraints on other Jews or relate to them as if they were not Jews at all, but at other times recognize differences of practice and belief and develop ways of handling them. In doing so, they provide an insight into a history of Judaism as a complex web of interactions between groups of Jews despite grounds for mutual antagonism. Substantial introductory chapters lay out the issues and provide an extensive survey of cases of toleration throughout the past two thousand years, outlining possible structural reasons for it. The eight chapters that follow each take a specific case of toleration within Judaism, attempting to explain it in light of the models outlined in the Introduction. Presented in chronological order, the cases have been selected to reflect a spectrum of responses, from grudging forbearance to enthusiastic welcome of difference. Covering both practice and theology, each case is presented in depth, with full documentation. The Conclusion provides an overview of the patterns of tolerance that have emerged and discusses the implications for writing the history of Judaism as a narrative more complex than either the tracing of a linear progression from the Bible to the present, with variations presented as deviations, or as a model of overlapping ‘Judaisms’. This innovative volume sheds light on an important and overlooked aspect of the history of Judaism and should have broad appeal, not only for students and scholars of Judaism but for students of religious studies more generally.

This volume asserts, through multiple examples, that Liberalism excluded many groups, including Jews, so that the exclusion of Jews was indeed integral to Liberalism and constitutive for it.