The University of Milan and the Issue of Race (1938-1945) [L’Università di Milano e la «questione della razza» (1938-1945)

Within the fascist regime’s anti-Semitic shift, the educational sector, and particularly universities, played a central role, becoming the privileged site for the development of the racial policy. The persecution of Jews also affected the Royal University of Milan, where, starting in September 1938, forty-one professors, assistants, associates, lecturers, and technical-administrative staff were expelled. This account retraces their stories, careers, adherence to fascism, and their relationship with Judaism; it also explores their removal from academia, life choices, the search for salvation, and their return after the war. These are stories of deprivation, escape, resistance, and, unfortunately, also of deportation and death, experienced amid the indifference of the surrounding world and the collective amnesia that characterized post-war Italy.