http://www.boston.com/dailynews/122/world/Italian_commission_finds_syste:.shtml

Italian commission finds systematic wartime plundering of Jewish assets

By Alessandra Rizzo, Associated Press, 5/2/2001 17:47

ROME (AP) Fascists and Nazis systematically plundered Jewish assets in Italy before and during World War II, a government commission said Wednesday in the country's first major investigation of the issue.

''Nobody was spared: neither the rich nor the poor,'' panel president Tina Anselmi told reporters. ''Decrees ordering the seizures include just about anything: silverware, real estate, works of art, valuable carpets, but also worthless house items and personal belongings.''

The seizures began in 1938, when the first anti-Semitic laws were promulgated in Italy by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. They intensified in the 1940s, when the racial legislation was stiffened.

The laws expelled Jews from government and university jobs and the military, and restricted their work, schooling and right to own property.

Under the Republic of Salo, set up by Fascists after Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943, more than 8,000 decrees were issued ordering the confiscation of Jewish assets, the report said. No fewer than 8,000 Jews and 230 firms in 46 cities and town were looted.

The 540-page report said it was impossible to put a dollar value on some of the losses, such as the financial losses to Jews barred from working.

But the commission's 2 1/2-year investigation found that until 1945 at least, real estate seizures were worth the equivalent of $32 million today.

Italian Premier Giuliano Amato said the report's findings left him ''breathless.''

The 15-member commission, set up by the Italian government in December 1998, examined thousands of files made available by state and bank archives, city offices and Italy's Jewish community. That community numbers about 35,000 in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country of 57 million.

Despite the widespread attention that plundered Holocaust assets has garnered elsewhere in Europe and the United States, the issue has often been overlooked in Italy, which this year held its first-ever Holocaust Memorial Day.

In all, almost 7,000 Jews were deported from Italy during the war, 5,910 of whom were killed.

After the war, the government passed laws providing for compensation to combatants and victims of the war.

Anselmi said many assets were returned, but jewelry, works of art and other easily exportable items were never given back to their legitimate owners.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001