Italy's Premier:Mussolini didn't kill anyone under Fascists

Sep 11, 2003
Italy's Premier Quoted as Saying Mussolini Never Killed Anyone During Fascist Rule
The Associated Press

ROME (AP) - A newspaper on Thursday quoted Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi as saying that Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini never killed anyone and only sent people into exile.

Amos Luzzatto, the president of the Italian Jewish community, expressed sadness over the reported remarks.

"The Fascist regime did not make extermination camps for the Jews, but certainly it contributed to creating them," he told the AGI news agency. "If killing someone only means hitting an adversary and killing him, then not even Hitler killed anyone."

The remarks appeared in the local Voce di Rimini newspaper, following an interview with a journalist from the paper and another from London's The Spectator. Berlusconi's party was quick to say the quote had not yet been confirmed.

Berlusconi reportedly made the comment during a discussion of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and Italy's experience with a tyrannical leader. Mussolini ruled Italy from 1922 until his ouster in 1943.

"Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile," Berlusconi was quoted as saying.

Berlusconi's Forza Italia party spokesman Sandro Bondi said "these lines must be confirmed," the Ap.Biscom news agency reported. He added that "the Fascist regime, as we all know, was a dictatorial and authoritarian regime."

"But as is universally accepted by all historians on the right and on the left, it cannot be in any way compared to Nazism or communism, which practiced systematic genocide against their own people and other peoples."

Widespread persecution of Italian Jews began in 1938 when Mussolini's regime issued racial laws. In 1943, German troops occupied northern and central Italy, and almost 7,000 Jews were deported, 5,910 of whom were killed.

The Italian Jewish community now numbers about 30,000, mainly in Rome and Milan.

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