In Europe

achieve in the slow moving, ponderous past. In Austria, a boycott of the Jews does not need organising – the people themselves have initiated it.’
    For the Austrian Jews, all this sudden misery had one bright side: they at least knew right away where they stood. In Germany, the occasional naïve soul could still hope that it would turn out all right, but for every Jew in Austria it was clear that he had to get out while the going was good.
    Gitta Sereny's theatre school emptied out. The drama teacher, an extremely kind-hearted man, jumped to his death from a fifth-floor window. Two other teachers left for the United States. Then it was her turn. One evening in May, Gitta's mother received a warning that she and her Jewish partner were no longer safe. They packed their belongings that night, and caught a train to Geneva the following day.
    The eighty-two-year-old Sigmund Freud was also harassed in his home at Berggase 19. On 4 June he was given permission to leave the city where he had lived from earliest childhood. He went to London, where he died one year later. Before being allowed to leave, the Nazis demandedthat the world-famous doctor sign a document stating that he had been treated well. Freud signed without batting an eye, and added a sentence of his own: ‘I can strongly recommend the Gestapo to one and all.’
    By May 1939, a little more than a year after the
Anschluss
, more than half of Austria's Jews had left the country.



Chapter TWENTY
Predappio
    ‘ MY NAME IS VITTORIO FOA. I WAS BORN IN 1910, SO I'M ALMOST ninety years old. Sometimes they call me the grandfather of progressive Italy, but that's nonsense of course. I did lead the union for years, that much is true. And I was an anti-Fascist, yes, that I was, from the very start.
    ‘My grandfather was the chief rabbi of Turin. A matter of family tradition, nothing more. Like most Jewish families in northern Italy, we belonged to the city's upper classes. It was only in Rome that one had a large Jewish proletariat. No, my anti-Fascism had little to do with my Jewish background. I considered myself a son of Italy, of the Renaissance, of the Enlightenment, of freedom. It was the Germans who finally drove us Jews together.
    ‘When did I start becoming aware of all this? I believe I was about thirteen at the time, in 1924, with the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, you know, the Socialist Party secretary who had the courage to protest openly in parliament against the Fascist terror. They abducted him right away and stabbed him to death. I was completely engrossed by that whole affair. I was only a boy, but I understood perfectly well that that murder was more than an attack on democracy, it was also an attack on the workers’ movement.
    ‘After that I saw the true face of Fascism everywhere I looked, even in my own city. I saw the violence in the streets, the arrogance of the blackshirts, the nationalism. The Fascists had burned down the union hall, I saw the workers standing silently around their burned homes.
    ‘When I was a little older I started writing booklets and pamphlets. They were printed in France. I was part of Carlo Rosselli's underground movement, Giustizia e Libertà, along with people like the publisher LeoneGinzburg, the writer Cesar Pavese and Alessandro Pertini, who later became president of Italy. We worked out of Turin, Rosselli was living in exile in Paris. In those days I saw Fascism as the rape of Italian history, as an excess, something that had nothing to do with Italy. I think differently these days. Fascism has deep roots in Italian history. It lasted twenty years here, while National Socialism lasted only twelve years in Germany. Liberalism, freedom, the government of law had to conquer Italy, and we're not nearly there yet.’
    ‘In spring 1936, when I was twenty-five, a Fascist judge sentenced me to fifteen years in prison. Purely on the basis of what I had written. The secret police had informants everywhere, and one of the “champions” on our side turned out to be a Fascist. I hadn't taken part in a raid or anything like that, it was only about words and paper. I was released in 1943, just in time to join up with the resistance. It was insane: no one in prison ever asked whether I was Jewish. I was actually very safe there.
    ‘During that whole seven-year period I heard almost no news from outside. We were totally isolated: no visitors, no newspapers, no radio. Once a week a censored letter from your parents. When