History, Memory And The Jews In Mussolini’s Italy: An Exercise In Counterfactualism
History, Memory And The Jews In Mussolini’s Italy: An Exercise In Counterfactualism

Summary/Abstract: Presenting a counterfactual scenario where Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini would have to face an international tribunal under charges similar to those that led to the sentencing in Nürnberg of the Nazi leaders, this article examines the theoretical distinction between memory and history advanced by Tony Judt in a volume published in 2005. Its vantage point is that historians, indeed social scientists in general, are not immune to memory, but that Judt’s distinction between it and history is nonetheless crucial. Within this context, the analysis of Mussolini’s Fascist government’s relations with the Jews before and after the dictator’s alliance with Hitler shall be visibly influenced by the identity of its author. I have chosen as “witnesses” at the trial (among whose jurors I would rather not be called!) the American political scientist A. James Gregor, on the one hand, and Jewish historian Meir Michaelis, on the other.

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