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This book describes the ever-escalating dangers to which Jewish refugees and recent immigrants were subjected in France and Italy as the Holocaust marched forward. Susan Zuccotti uncovers a grueling yet complex history of suffering and resilience through historical documents and personal testimonies from members of nine central and eastern European Jewish families, displaced to France in the opening years of the Second World War. The chronicle of their lives reveals clearly that these Jewish families experienced persecution of far greater intensity than citizen Jews or long-time resident immigrants.The odyssey of the nine families took them from hostile Vichy France to the Alpine village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie and on to Italy, where German soldiers rather than hoped-for Allied troops awaited. Those who crossed over to Italy were either deported to Auschwitz or forced to scatter in desperate flight. Zuccotti brings to light the agonies of the refugees' unstable lives, the evolution of French policies toward Jews, the reasons behind the flight from the relative idyll of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, and the choices that confronted those who arrived in Italy. Powerful archival evidence frames this history, while firsthand reports underscore the human cost of the nightmarish years of persecution.

Roberto Benigni's \"Life is Beautiful\" is discussed. The film tells the story of a young boy who survives a Nazi concentration camp through his father's remarkable, imaginative efforts to protect him.

Sciesopoli è il nome di una colonia nei pressi di Bergamo, costruita nel 1933-1934 secondo i dettami dell’architettura razionalista e voluta fortemente da Benito Mussolini. Nell’immediato dopoguerra, grazie all’intervento della Brigata Ebraica, la colonia fascista si trasforma in un centro di accoglienza per orfani sopravvissuti alla Shoà. Oggi Sciesopoli è una rovina contemporanea, parte della ricca costellazione delle colonie abbandonate che puntellano l’orizzonte urbano italiano. L’articolo ripercorre la storia dell’edificio, concentrandosi sulla trasformazione dello spazio attuata nel 1945 e analizzando il significato politico dello stato di abbandono in cui versa oggi la struttura. Sciesopoli is the name of a colony near Bergamo, built in 1933-1934 according to the dictates of rationalist architecture and strongly desired by Benito Mussolini. Immediately after the war, thanks to the intervention of the Jewish Brigade, the fascist colony was transformed into a reception center for orphans who survived the Holocaust. Today Sciesopoli is a contemporary ruin, part of the rich constellation of abandoned colonies scattered throughout the Italian urban horizon. The article traces the history of the building, concentrating on the transformation of the space implemented in 1945 and analyzing the political significance of the structure’s state of abandonment today.