‘We Liberated Ourselves from Italians!’: Jewish Agency, Self-Organisation, and Resistance in the Italian-Occupied Dalmatia, 1941–3

2025/06/11 by Željka Oparnica
Social Sciences · #European history and politics #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

paper · doi:10.1017/s0960777324000602

openalex publication_date 2025/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02

Abstract

Jewish resistance to the destruction of European Jewry during the Nazi era has stirred many scholars; however, some areas of war-torn Europe remain neglected in this respect, for instance Italy and Italian-occupied territories. This article aims to unearth the Jewish history of Jewish resistance in the Italian province of Dalmatia between June 1941 and September 1943, emphasising longer evolution of political ideology, personal networks and social organisations that fostered and sustained resistance. Based on either as-yet unknown or rarely used testimonies of the Holocaust survivors who spent the war years in Dalmatia, this article argues that these are crucial to understand why and how Jewish politics in inter-war Yugoslavia enabled Jews to self-organise and to start and sustain open resistance to fascism.

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