The author’s central argument, set out in the very introduction, is that the Jewish Brigade represents “the paradigm of the Zionist project” and “a Trojan horse used to bring Israel into the antifascist camp”, despite the actions of its governments. Ironically, those very governments are also supported by parties descended from the Fascism that the Jewish Brigade genuinely fought against, albeit for only thirty days. This makes it all the more important to examine the Brigade’s role from its establishment in December 1944—when the war was, for all practical purposes, already over—until its disbandment.
The booklet’s subtitle, A Controversial History, from 1944 to the Present, already points the reader towards the book’s central theme, which gradually unfolds over the course of its chapters: when wars end, they “are not handed over to history alone, but also to politics”, with all the narratives and revisions that follow—often inauthentic and politically motivated or, at the very least, controversial.
To avoid confusion arising from the similarity of their names, Fazolo points out that during the First World War a Jewish Legion had been established with the successful aim of assisting the Allied Powers in bringing down the Ottoman Empire.
The Jewish Brigade, by contrast, came into being almost thirty years later, at the initiative of the Jewish Agency, itself founded in 1929 to promote the immigration of Jews of all nationalities to Palestine and to foster the creation of the “national home” promised in the declaration that Lord Balfour had delivered to the banker Rothschild, a leading figure in the Zionist movement, in 1917.
In reality, as Ben-Gurion—the “founding father of Israel”—would later make clear in his own statements, the objective extended well beyond the idea of a mere “national home”. The relentless and brutal antisemitic persecution that Jews had endured for centuries reached unprecedented levels under the Nazi and Fascist regimes, when it was even codified in law, making the need for a “state of refuge” especially acute.
Fazolo traces the various stages that led to the creation of this Jewish military unit alongside the Allies, which finally took shape at the end of 1944 after the Jewish Agency and the British government had reached a broad agreement.
The Jewish Agency’s appeal, however, drew only a limited response: just 4,000 volunteers enlisted. Drawn from 54 countries, the force also included some non-Jewish volunteers.
Fazolo argues that, despite this small number of volunteers—who arrived when the outcome of the war had effectively been decided for more than a year, following the Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad—the World Zionist Organization was nevertheless able to claim the right to the establishment of the State of Israel.
The Brigade did not see action immediately. Instead, it remained in training, first in Egypt and then in Italy, where it spent four months in Fiuggi, making use of the town’s thermal spas and hotel facilities. Only in the spring of 1945—one month after Auschwitz had already been liberated by the Red Army—was the Jewish Brigade deployed to Romagna, where it finally became operational, taking part in several engagements against the retreating German forces. These clashes claimed, among other casualties, the lives of 30 Jewish soldiers, enabling the international Zionist movement to claim its place among the victors of the Second World War.
Fazolo expresses a very harsh judgement, which he supports with documented and verifiable facts, regarding the indifference of Palestinian Jews towards the horrific fate that had befallen European Jews. Yet, he argues, the Jews of Palestine could have intervened, as they already had well-trained paramilitary organisations at their disposal—the same organisations that later became notorious for acts of Jewish terrorism aimed at securing the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
In reviewing the events that unfolded during the Second World War, the author recalls that in 1942 the British, who were then the mandatory power in Palestine, established the Palestine Regiment, in which Jews born in or having immigrated to Palestine and non-Jewish Palestinians cooperated loyally side by side. When the Palestine Regiment was disbanded, some of the Jewish members joined the newly established Jewish Brigade.
The historical reconstruction of the period under examination also includes a reference to the despicable figure of Sheikh Mohammed Husseini, a Nazi sympathiser who is therefore often used as a means of accusing Palestinians of pro-Nazi sympathies. In reality, however, Husseini had little following, and he did not even spend most of his life in Palestine.
As far as Italy is concerned, Fazolo focuses on the strong relationship between Italian Jews and Fascism up until 1938. Although Mussolini had already occasionally shown signs of antisemitic tendencies, Fascism did not include antisemitism in its political programme until the alliance with Nazi Germany. Indeed, 230 Italian Jews took part in the March on Rome, and, up until the shameful racial laws of 1938, 10,370 Jews were members of the Fascist Party. Furthermore, in 1934 the Jewish banker Ettore Ovazza founded the weekly newspaper of Fascist Jews, La nostra bandiera (Our Flag), with the intention of Fascistising all Italian Jewish communities. His enthusiasm was shattered by the racial laws and then, in 1943, the Nazi beasts murdered him and his family.
To be fair, Fazolo also recalls that, in Fascist Italy, there were many Italian Jews who sided with antifascist movements and parties and who later took part in the Resistance. He points out that, while around thirty Jewish intellectuals signed the Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals published by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, an equal number signed the Manifesto of Antifascist Intellectuals, published a few days later by the philosopher Benedetto Croce
With remarkable concision and by drawing also on documented anecdotes and testimonies, the author reconstructs, in fewer than 100 pages, the picture of Italy during the infamous twenty year Fascist period, without overlooking either the discrimination or Mussolini’s attempt to exploit Zionism in order to weaken British positions in the Mediterranean.
Since Fascist ideology, followed by Nazi ideology, spread far beyond Italy and Germany during those years, some pages of this book are also devoted to the European situation.
Among the Jewish antifascist organisations in Western Europe, France stands out with its Armée juive, made up of around 2,000 fighters, while in Eastern Europe it was above all the ghettos that were active, where armed resistance was heroic and widespread, from Warsaw to Vilnius and from Minsk to Krakow, Łódź and dozens of other smaller cities. In the Minsk ghetto, in Belarus, the fighters even enabled around 10,000 Jews to escape, who would otherwise have been destined for the extermination camps.
Unfortunately, however, elsewhere things unfolded differently, and in Warsaw, to use the author’s words, it was “A struggle without hope of victory, a surge of pride from those who refused to be dragged passively to the gallows.” But, Fazolo reminds us, those defending them were not the Zionist formations that would later, unjustifiably, claim those heroic and desperate battles as their own.
Therefore, he adds, the awarding of the Gold Medal for Military Valour to the Jewish Brigade—granted by President Mattarella in October 2018, seventy-three years after the end of the war, and in deviation from the legal criteria governing such awards (see Legislative Decree no. 66/2010)—appears to be “a very specific political operation aimed at institutionalising support for Israel”. According to the author, it represents one of the “revisionist distortions intended to spread the narratives of Zionist propaganda”. The same propaganda, he argues, is reflected at the 25 April commemorations, where some Jewish Brigade flags are displayed, but amid a sea of Israeli flags: the flags of a country that embodies the Zionist entity which, in his view, has taken the form of settler colonialism, illegal occupation, violence, and racism.
That is, the exact opposite of the values of the Resistance remembered and honoured on 25 April, values further and violently wounded by the sight of Israeli flags—already inappropriate for the reasons outlined above—being displayed alongside flags celebrating the Azov Battalion and Stepan Bandera, whose organisation (OUN) took part in the Nazi Ukrainian Holocaust of Jews during the Second World War.
Fazolo, by bringing together historical facts and the succession of events reported in the chronicles of recent decades, argues that in Europe, and particularly in the Italy of the “Second Republic”, “Atlanticism and Zionism have become a criterion for being able to participate in the institutional political arena”. He further argues that the instrumental revival, after decades of oblivion, of the Jewish Brigade succeeded “in introducing contradictions within the antifascist camp, even going so far as to dismantle it”, legitimising the presence of today’s Zionists within the antifascist camp despite all evidence to the contrary, as is apparent even from the mass media that are discreetly or openly pro-Israeli.
In conclusion, the author states—and demonstrates throughout his pages—that the revival of the Jewish Brigade, beyond the respect owed to the Jewish volunteers who were part of it, is a manipulation of history serving Israel, a country that is, in his view, an established and evident example of the erosion of international legality and contempt for universal humanitarian law.
