Luca Fenoglio (United Kingdom), PhD student, University of Edinburgh, “The ‘everyday life’ of persecution: Italian diplomats and police officers, and the anti-Jewish policy in Italian-occupied France”.

Luca Fenoglio is a PhD student in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology of the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral dissertation is provisionally entitled ‘Resisting the ‘final solution’? Fascist Italy’s policy towards the Jews in southeastern France, November 1942 – September 1943’.

During his tenure at the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (at Shoah Memorial) in Paris, Mr. Fenoglio will investigate the enforcement of anti-Jewish measures by the Italian occupation authorities in southeastern France.

On the one hand, he will focus on the Italian Consuls in Nice – Alberto Calisse and subsequently Augusto Spechel – who operated in the region that harboured the majority of the Jewish refugees in the Italian zone. On the other hand, he will concentrate on Rosario Barranco and Guido Lospinoso, the two police officers who supervised the internment of all the Jews in forced stays located in inland France.

Mr. Fenoglio will primarily use the files of the Gestapo in occupied France, particularly reports of the anti-Jewish measures taken in the Italian occupied territories, reports of meetings with Italian officers and diplomats, as well as reports of the efforts made by German and French authorities to obtain the Italian collaboration in the ‘final solution’. In addition, he will examine the archives of the Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives. Finally, Mr. Fenoglio will use the records of the Jewish rescue organisations that operated in the Italian occupation zone.

Luca fenoglio will be in residence at the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris in July 2014. He may be contacted at L.Fenoglio@sms.ed.ac.uk.