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Growing up in Southern Italy during World War II, all of us children were kept in the dark about the horrors taking place near and far. Constant hunger, pestilent diseases and bombing raids were enough hardships for us to endure. It was June 10, 1940, when it all began. A huge crowd of somber townspeople gathered next door to our home. A wealthy la...

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A wartime air-raid shelter and bunker built by Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini reopen to visitors on Friday following renovation works and the addition of a new multimedia exhibition. The underground complex is located below the Casino Nobile in the grounds of Villa Torlonia, the private residence of Mussolini and his family from 1929 until...

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A new free-access online database maps out more than 1,400 monuments, buildings, street signs and plaques that bear witness to Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. All over Italy are vestiges of its fascist past, and the Luoghi Fascismo (“Places of Fascism”) mapping project aims to bring the country’s darkest chapter into the mainstream for a reckoni...

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“If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize,” wrote pioneering neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with biochemist Stanley Cohen, Ph.D. In 1952, Levi-Montalcini had made the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF), a...

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On first appearances, Bolzano in the far north of Italy is just like any other alpine town. Nestled in a valley lined by steep green hills peppered with castles, barns and churches, and terraced with vineyards, the city is a whimsical snow globe of winding streets, pastel-coloured houses and Baroque taverns. But cross the Talfer river on the wester...

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The “Fleeing Mussolini — Italian-Jewish Refugees in the United States” video was released on Youtube by the Sousa Mendes Foundation (SMF) on November 28th. Opened by Olia Mattis, President of the SMF, and moderated by Natalia Indrina, director of the Centro Primo Levi (CPL), the video featured a short documentary film based on Gianna Pontecorboli’s...

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Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 6pm. John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10036. In the post-World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, consumerism, and the democratic expansion of civic rights, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini became surprisin...

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Maria, a beautiful and young Italian woman, stood at the doorway of her future — one of Italy’s medical schools — eagerly waiting to enter, only to be greeted by unfriendly students and professors, muttering, “Che vergogna,” for shame! Why the fuss? Well, it was once an all-male school, and now it was not! For young Maria Montessori, it was such an...

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In the spring of 1936, newspapers throughout Upstate New York wrote about strange marriage ceremonies happening throughout the region and around the country. Hundreds of husbands and wives were getting remarried after exchanging polished steel rings sent to them by the Fascist leader of Italy, Benito Mussolini, after sending him their gold ones.

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Let’s pretend we took a random poll through New York City streets, asking random individuals for an opinion about fascism. How many would have anything positive to say? Most likely very few, if any at all. That is because in 2018, more than half a century away from the fall of the greatest fascist regimes in history, fascism is generally (and right...

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