The talk addresses the role of ordinary Italians in the Holocaust. Contrary to commonly held conceptions, almost half of the about 8,000 Jews arrested in Italy, who were mostly deported to Auschwitz between 1943-45, were arrested by Italians. Mussolini had paved the ground for this with anti-Jewish propaganda and persecution since the "racial laws" of 1938. The role of Italian bureaucrats, ideologues and members of the Fascist Party, makes Italians, as well as the German occupants, responsible for the genocide.
