Leone Sinigaglia and the Italy of Fascist Anti-Semitism

At Palazzo Barolo, on the initiative of the Fulvio Croce Foundation for the Turin Bar Association and the Friends of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Holocaust Remembrance Day was dedicated to the figure of the Jewish musician Leone Sinigaglia, who died tragically in May 1944.
Giulio Disegni, who outlined the historical, political, and legal context of the era with a presentation on Leone Sinigaglia and Italy under Fascist anti-Semitism, and Giuliana Maccaroni, Director of the Library of the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Turin, who spoke about the musician’s life and the Sinigaglia Collection held at the Conservatory, were invited to speak.
The two presentations were followed by a concert by the Archos Quartet, which performed numerous pieces, including unpublished works, by the Jewish composer.
Giulio Disegni’s presentation follows:

When we talk about the death of Leone Sinigaglia, which occurred in Turin in May 1944, we are not simply recounting the tragic end of a musician. We are recounting the culmination of a long, political, and cultural process that spanned the entire history of Fascist Italy and culminated in the persecution and death of thousands of Italian Jews.
To truly understand what happened in Sinigaglia, we must therefore broaden our perspective: to the racial laws of 1938, the spread of anti-Semitism, the role of popular consensus, denunciations, and finally, occupied Turin after September 8, 1943.
It is important to state this immediately: anti-Semitism did not arise in Italy with Fascism. It already existed, as in much of Europe, in the form of religious prejudices, social stereotypes, and cultural mistrust. However, until the 1930s, Italian Jews were largely integrated into society.
They were teachers, professionals, soldiers, intellectuals, ordinary people. They had actively participated in the Risorgimento, the First World War, and the construction of the unified Italian state: they felt profoundly Italian and certainly did not perceive their Jewish identity as a factor of separation.
Precisely for this reason, the racial laws of 1938 came as a sudden and incomprehensible shock to many.
In 1938, the Fascist regime introduced the racial laws, officially adopting a racist and anti-Semitic doctrine. This was not a German imposition: it was an autonomous choice of Italian Fascism, developed within a process of radicalization of the regime.
The laws systematically targeted Jews:

• expulsion from schools and universities,
• exclusion from public employment,
• ban from cultural life,
• financial and professional limitations,
• social segregation.

From one day to the next, Italian citizens became “foreigners” in their own homeland.
The regime accompanied these measures with massive anti-Semitic propaganda: newspapers, posters, magazines, and public speeches constructed the image of the Jew as “other,” as an internal enemy, as someone to be isolated.
A crucial point, often difficult to address, concerns consensus. Fascism governed not only through repression, but also thanks to widespread support—or at least acceptance—by the population.
The racial laws did not provoke mass protests. In most cases, they were accepted, ignored, or justified. Many Italians did not directly participate in the persecution, but neither did they oppose it. This climate of indifference was decisive.
Over time, the exclusion of Jews became “normal.” And when persecution becomes normal, the step to violence is shorter.
September 8, 1943, marked a dramatic turning point. With the German occupation of Northern Italy and the birth of the Italian Social Republic, the nature of persecution changed.
Until then, Jews had been discriminated against. From then on, they became defenseless, ready to be arrested, deported, or eliminated.
The fascist authorities of the Italian Republic collaborated actively with the Nazis: they compiled lists, made arrests, and organized roundups. It was during this phase that denunciations emerged forcefully: anonymous reports, neighbors, and acquaintances revealing who was Jewish, who was in hiding, or who had not registered.
Not always out of ideological fanaticism: often out of fear, opportunism, revenge, or to gain material advantage. But the result was the same: the persecution machine worked because it was also fueled from below.
Turin was an industrial, working-class city, but also profoundly affected by fascism. It had a historic, integrated, and culturally vibrant Jewish community. After 1938, Jews in Turin were also expelled from schools, cultural institutions, and professions.
After 1943, the city became one of the places of harshest persecution: arrests, roundups, deportations. Hundreds of Turin’s Jews were sent to Auschwitz. Others sought refuge, hid, and lived in daily anguish.
It was in this occupied, violent, and fearful Turin that Leone Sinigaglia spent his last months.
Sinigaglia was not a political opponent. He was a musician, an intellectual, an elderly man. He had dedicated his life to the study of music, particularly to the promotion of Piedmontese folklore, making a significant contribution to Italian culture.
Yet, all this no longer mattered. In 1944, for the regime, Sinigaglia was just one thing: a Jew.
On May 16, 1944, fascist soldiers showed up at the Mauriziano Hospital, where he had taken refuge, to arrest him. During the attempted capture, Sinigaglia died, likely of a heart attack. He died in his hometown, before being deported. A death that, by tragic chance, saved him from the concentration camp, but which is nonetheless a death caused by persecution.
Leone Sinigaglia’s story is emblematic because it shows us that the violence of fascism did not only strike young people, militants, and fighters. It also struck men of culture, the elderly, peaceful, and perfectly integrated.
His death forces us to face an uncomfortable truth: the Holocaust in Italy was not solely the work of the Nazis, but the result of Italian political choices, supported by the consensus, silence, and sometimes the complicity of a segment of society.
Remembering Sinigaglia means remembering not only a victim, but a fractured cultural world. And it also means questioning the present: how easily exclusion can become normality, and normality can become violence.

Giulio Disegni