Monday, May 26, 2008

The Jewish mother of fascism

It is not widely known that one of the founders of Italian fascism was a Jewish woman, Margherita Sarfatti, who was a long-time mistress and confidante of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator.
Margherita was born in 1880 to a wealthy Jewish family named Grassini living in Venice. She became a convinced socialist at an early age and at 18 married Cesare Sarfatti (meaning "from France" in Hebrew), a Jewish lawyer from Padua. They moved to Milan, where in 1911 she met the impoverished teacher and socialist Mussolini, and became his mistress. She recognizing his innate ability and drive, and over time she helped to educate him in politics and in fact she supposedly wrote and revised most of his articles thru the 1920s when he was editor of the Italian socialist party's magazine. The 1922 "March on Rome" which enabled Mussolini to seize power, was devised in her living room. She helped him to develop his revolutionary theory, played a significant role in the rise of fascism and wrote Mussolini's first offical biography. She particularly sponsored modern Italian art and sculpture and helped Mussolini with his international contacts, meeting many famous people on his behalf.
Italian fascism was not inherently anti-Semitic, although is was racist in other respects. But, problems began for Margherita when, as she became older, she was replaced by a succession of younger mistresses, the last being Clara Petracci (who was murdered by anti-fascists with Mussolini in Milan in 1944). Nevertheless the complex relationship between Mussolini and Margherita continued, with her advising and ghost writing for him. In 1938, Mussolini decided to form an alliance, the "Axis," with Adolf Hitler, which she opposed. As a part of this alliance he introduced anti-Semitic legislation in Italy, and so Margherita was forced to flee. She was unable to enter the US (where she had visited before) so instead she moved to Argentina. Her sister perished in Auschwitz, but her daughters remained safe (her son was killed in WWI), presumably as an agreement with Mussolini. One daughter converted to Catholicism in 1930 and married a Christian. Her daughters and their offspring today are in fact quite wealthy, but are also left-wing in their views and are identified with support for the Palestinians.
In exile she never spoke against Mussolini or fascism and even though she returned to Italy in 1947, where she died in 1961, she never published the thousands of letters and papers that it is known she kept that describe her intimate relationship with el Duce. A movie entitled "Cradle will rock" was made in 1999 that included Margherita played by Susan Sarandon. For more information see the recent articles in Ha'aretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=735492
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=735502

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