Based on extensive archival documentation and ethnographical research among Roma and Sinti communities, Paola Trevisan’s book offers the first reconstruction of the Fascist regime’s anti-Gypsy policies.
Following an introductory chapter that provides a concise historical and anthropological overview of the Roma and Sinti family groups living in the Italian peninsula since the fifteenth century, Trevisan shifts focus to post-unification Italy and the Fascist period. In Chapter 2, she analyses how social sciences – and particularly criminal anthropology, sociology and social medicine – contributed to the racialisation of ‘Gypsies’ as inherently criminal and nomadic. The author perceptively highlights the coexistence of two distinct yet conflicting frameworks: on the one hand, Lombroso’s theory of atavism, which depicted ‘Gypsies’ as ‘primitive’ others and a criminal threat to society; on the other hand, the eugenic approach, which promoted ‘social prophylaxis’, a range of sanitary and educational measures ultimately aimed at integrating Roma and Sinti families into the body politic.
In Chapter 3, Trevisan details how Italian governments did not implement a specific policy for identifying Roma and Sinti groups, while constantly denying their existence as ‘Gypsies’ and Italians, thereby stripping them of their right to citizenship. All circulars issued during the liberal period treated ‘Gypsies’ as ‘foreigners’ and insisted on their expulsion due to the alleged threats they posed to public hygiene, as well as their vagabondage and potential criminality. In 1909, Italian policymakers went so far as to decline an invitation to an international conference convened to settle the nationality status of ‘Gypsies’ who were repeatedly expelled by neighbouring countries. Within this context, Giolitti’s government confirmed that there were no ‘Italian Gypsies’, only a few hundred families engaged in itinerant trades. This denial of a century-long presence allowed the unified Kingdom of Italy to reject claims that ‘Gypsies’ expelled from bordering countries belonged to Italy, while continuing to expel those deemed foreign.
After the First World War, the reshaping of Italy’s north-eastern border had several consequences for the ‘Gypsies’ who inhabited or travelled through those territories. Venezia Giulia and Venezia Tridentina were home to some Roma and Sinti families who led an itinerant life in the Alpine valleys. These groups continued their familiar patterns of mobility across the old and new borders, but their presence became increasingly problematic for the Fascist regime. A strict interpretation of the citizenship rules for those without a fixed abode became a means for denying citizenship to most Roma and Sinti living in these provinces while legitimising their forced escorting to the border. During the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, in strict continuity with liberal-era policies, the Fascist regime continued to expel ‘Gypsies’ as ‘foreigners’ who were deemed a threat to public security and hygiene, while denying residence to those born in Italy.
By the end of the 1930s, the police authorities could no longer manage the presence of ‘Gypsies’ along the borders through extra-legal expulsions alone. In 1937–8, three police circulars focusing on ‘Gypsies’ living in the north-eastern border region marked a significant shift in Fascist anti-Gypsy policy. The regime introduced a new official category: ‘Gypsies’ of ‘certain or presumed Italian nationality’ (p. 123). This recognition laid the groundwork for the confinement of Roma and Sinti with a criminal record – or those merely deemed ‘dangerous’ – to isolated provinces in central and southern Italy.
Chapter 4 examines the Fascist persecution of ‘Gypsies’ during the Second World War, between 1940 and 1945. As Italy prepared for war, the perceived ‘Gypsy danger’ prompted the regime to restrict the mobility of all ‘Gypsies’ within the kingdom and led to a transition from a policy of police confinement to one of internment. On 11 September 1940, the police chief Arturo Bocchini issued a circular that no longer differentiated between Italians and foreigners, nor between those with and without a criminal record. All ‘Gypsies’ were accused of engaging in ‘antinational’ and ‘Communist’ activities and were subsequently interned in concentration camps in central and southern Italy (Bojano, Agnone, Tossicia and Ferramonti di Tarsia) or relocated to ‘special localities’ far from the borders, akin to police confinement. Notably, the Fascist regime did not register Italian ‘Gypsies’, nor did it establish criteria for identifying them. There was no specific legislation targeting ‘Gypsies’, nor any systematic data collection by either the central government or local police authorities. These circumstances, combined with the fact that Roma and Sinti groups had already been removed from the north-eastern border and placed in concentration camps and internment sites in central and southern Italy, limited the numbers of ‘Gypsies’ deported to Nazi Lager between 1943 and 1945.
The final chapter demonstrates how the institutions of the Italian Republic perpetuated the anti-Gypsy practices and discourses of the Fascist period, continuing to deny Roma and Sinti families their rights as citizens.
The enduring marginalisation of the Roma and Sinti communities as well as the peculiarities of Fascist anti-Gypsy policy – i.e. the absence of a specific legal category or special legislation concerning ‘Gypsies’, and the reliance on persecutory measures such as confinement and internment, which were also applied to other groups deemed ‘dangerous’ – help explain not only why historiography has long remained silent on this topic but also why Roma and Sinti testimonies have been systematically dismissed, finding no place in the collective memory of Fascism and antifascism. By challenging the tendency to conflate Fascist and Nazi persecutory practices, Trevisan’s book not only highlights the distinctive characteristics of Fascist anti-Gypsy policy but also situates the Fascist persecution within a broader history of the social and political exclusion of Roma and Sinti from Italian national identity.
As with all fundamental and groundbreaking contributions, Trevisan’s book is also significant for the historiographical questions it raises but does not explore fully. In particular, the construction of the anti-Gypsy imaginary and iconography in the popular press and the persistence of racialised discourses and policies in the postwar republican period represent compelling avenues for future research.
