"Pouring Jewish water into fascist wine"

The aim of the first volume is to offer the reader a critical edition of the petitions in their original Italian language that (Catholic) Jews residing in Italy submitted to the Fascist General Administration for Demography and Race (Demorazza) in order either to be "discriminated," i.e., not subjected to various provisions of Mussolini's racial laws of 1938, or "Aryanized," i.e., be considered not of "the Jewish race," as defined by the convoluted and inconsistent Fascist anti-Semitic legislation. Anyone born of parents who both were of "the Jewish race," even though professing a religion other than Judaism, was deemed to be Jewish. Consequently, the racial laws affected not only those Italians who considered themselves Jewish, whether secular or religious, but also a significant number of Catholics whose ancestors had been Jewish, as the majority of the cases contained in this volume show. The aim of the second part of the project on the impact of the racial laws under the Mussolini regime is to offer the reader a critical edition and an English translation of 139 letters that were exchanged between the victims of those laws (and their relatives and friends) and the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi (1861'1956) who interceded with the Fascist government in order to circumvent or alleviate various provisions of the 1938 anti-Jewish legislation.