Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, the great-grandson of King Victor Emmanuel III, wrote a letter to the Jewish community of the country in which he said that his family’s role in the rubber stamp dictator Benito Mussolini’s anti-Semitic laws caused a wound to remain open for the whole of Italy. ‘
He said he and his family members “distanced ourselves” from the king, who approved of Mussolini’s rise to power and gave the laws royal permission, and asked for forgiveness for the actions of his ancestor.
But the gesture, made Wednesday before Holocaust Remembrance Day, was dismissed by historians as ‘too late’ and drew the anger of Jewish groups who condemned the family’s long reluctance to play its role in the foundation for the Holocaust. Holocaust in Europe.
Mussolini’s racial laws snatched away the civil rights of Jewish Italians between 1938 and 1943, during which the dictator committed himself to Hitler to form the Ash powers.
“What happened to the racial laws, at the height of a long collaboration with a dictatorship, is a transgression for Italians, Jews and non-Jews, which cannot be obliterated and forgotten,” the Jewish community of Rome said. said in response to Emanuele Filiberto’s letter.
“The silence over these facts from the descendants of that house, which lasted for more than 80 years, is a further aggravating circumstance,” they added. “The descendants of the victims have no authority to forgive and it does not depend on Jewish institutions to rehabilitate people and facts whose historical judgment is engraved in the history of our country.”
Emanuele Filiberto (48) is the grandson of Italy’s last king, Umberto II, and a prospective heir to the throne if the royal family was not dissolved in 1946 in a referendum. Descendants of the former Italian monarchy still use royal titles, although it is not recognized in law.
Historian Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, a researcher at the Shoa Foundation Rome, told CNN his letter was “too little too late, adding:” I think it was an attempt at some publicity.
“The king played a very serious role” in approving Mussolini’s laws, he added. ‘Some testimonies say that he was personally against (the laws), but that he did not want to act against fascism. He did not want to risk a conflict … It was an episode of great cowardice. ‘
Andrea Ungari, a historian and professor at the Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, added that it was “not clear” what motivated Emanuele Filiberto to write the letter. “Of course there is no responsibility on him or on his father, so if anyone had to excuse himself, it was King Umberto II,” he said, referring to the princes who ruled for several months in 1946 while the royal family was fighting. in vain for his survival at the ballot box.
Mussolini’s racial laws, enacted with his infamous ‘Manifesto of Race’, prohibited Jewish people from attending university or holding public office, restricting their travel and assets, and introducing numerous other controls into their public lives.
Emanuele Filiberto’s letter was published before January 27, a day of remembrance commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“I am writing with an open heart a letter that is certainly not easy for you, a letter that may surprise you and that you may not have expected,” he wrote to the Italian Jewish community.
“I want to officially and solemnly ask for forgiveness in the name of my whole family. I have decided to take this step, which is a duty for me, so that the memory of what happened remains alive, so that the memory is always present. , “he added.
More than 6 million Jews died as a result of the Nazi regime during the Massacre, both in society and in hundreds of concentration camps set up in Central and Eastern Europe.
CNN’s Antonia Mortensen contributed to this report.