Spreading “the Pride of the Race” abroad. The shadow of racial laws in the italian schools of Tunisia

Abstract

The introduction of anti-Jewish legislation in Italian schools, since September 1938, had been studied by several historiographical works. However, the application of the racial laws – both as jurisdictional precepts and as propaganda – in the educational institutions of the Italian communities abroad is less known. The fascist regime had deployed a considerable effort in the fascistization of emigrants, and schools had already played a key role in this work of political education, even before 1938. After the outbreak of State anti-Semitism, he answers given by the local authorities of Fascist regime, essentially the political representative and the scholastic staff, were heterogeneous and greatly influenced by the different political, cultural and juridical contexts in which they operated. For this reason too, the studies on the subject are still rare and fragmented. Using a little-known documentation, like the funds of “Scuole Italiane all’Estero”, the article aims to reconstruct the translation of the racial directives from Italy to Tunisia in its various facets, without neglecting the voices of the protagonists, collected during the period 2013-2017. From this first analysis, the Tunisian case appears as emblematic to understand how, and how far, the local fascist authorities translated the directives of racial exclusion from the centre to the periphery, as well as the importance of diligence and conformism in the mechanism of persecution.