On the shores of the Adriatic Sea lies the Italian city of Trieste, a city that was known as the "aliyah gate" during the interwar period because it was one of the only European port cities from which one could sail to Israel. A stream of Jewish immigration passed through the port up until the end of the 19th century, although at that time it was largely in order to escape the poverty and the anti-Semitism of Europe for America. In the 20th century, these Jewish immigrants were joined by those who sough to reach the land of their ancestors, and as the dark clouds of Nazism formed over the Old World, Trieste became a key point in the escape path. Those who made it to the Italian port city had a chance of leaving Europe and escaping the terror of the coming German occupation.
A resourceful community
Before the outbreak of World War II, thousands of Jews passed through the "aliyah gate" of Trieste on their way to the Land of Israel.
The legendary Jewish captain Umberto Steindler, a native of the city famous for making over 100 trips to the Holy Land, is buried in the Jewish cemetery in southern Trieste. His gravestone, one of the many grand gravestones in Trieste's Jewish ceremonies, is a testament to the important role Jews played in the city going back to when it was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In fact, it was the resourceful Jews who started businesses in the fields of banking, industry and insurance that were behind the city's astronomical economic growth in the 19th century.
Camillo Castiglioni, the son of Trieste's chief rabbi, was a pioneer in the vehicle and aviation industries. He was one of BMW's chief stockholders and was considered one of the richest men in all of Central Europe during World War I. The Stock family from Trieste established one of Europe's largest distilleries, which later expanded to the U.S. The Morforgo banking family's grand palace now serves as one of the city's most beautiful museums. Other Jews excelled in international trade, for which Trieste served as a crossroads.
The Jewish community of Trieste, it should be noted, was different from the other Jewish communities in Italy in that it was largely composed of Ashkenazi Jews. In fact, it was the only Ashkenazi Jewish community on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Sephardic Jews only began to arrive in Trieste in large numbers in the 19th century. They came from Corfu and established a separate Sephardi community.
But Trieste's Jews had integrated into city prior to the 19th century. Up until the end of the 17th century, Trieste authorities did not force them to live in a ghetto or wear the badge of shame Jews in other Italian cities were typically made to wear. Although things changed in 1675, Trieste once again adopted an exceptionally positive attitude toward Jews I when the city was ruled by Austria. In 1782, Emperor Joseph II enacted the Edict of Tolerance, which granted Jews equal rights. Despite the move, many Jews joined and even led the Italian national movement that called for Trieste to be annexed by Italy.
One of the movement's leaders was Salvatore Barzilai, a Jew who served as one of the heads of the Italian irredentism movement to return the provinces that claimed a historical or cultural connection to Italy to "Mother Italy." In 1915, Barzilai was appointed a minister in the government and became a symbol of the moment. Revisionist Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky could not help but notice the joy with which his people, Barzilai included, were acting to revive the nationalism of other nations and called for them to focus some of this Jewish fervor on the Zionist movement instead.
But it was not only Italian nationalism and Zionism that were in competition at that turbulent time over the hearts of Trieste's Jews. Due to the multinational character of the city and its location in the center of the Italian, German and Slavic space, there existed in the city a variety of sometimes opposing ideologies, from socialism and Marxism to Italian fascism. Some of Trieste's Jews, like Jews throughout Italy at the time, did indeed flirt with Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, something that did not keep them from falling victim to the race laws adopted by the fascist authorities at the demand of the Germans. When the Nazis themselves occupied the city, the fate of all the Jews, regardless of ideology, had been sealed.
In Trieste, the Germans built the only concentration camp on Italian soil - Risiera di San Sabba. Beginning in Oct. 1943, the Jews of Trieste and the surrounding areas in Italy, Croatia and Slovenia were rounded up and deported to the camp. It is estimated that some 3,000 of the prisoners, who were mainly comprised of Jews but also opponents of the regime and Italian and Yugoslavian partisans, were murdered in the camp. Thousands more were sent to the death camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau in particular.
Trieste's Jewish community never recovered from the Holocaust; its population went from 6,000 before the war to less than 1,000. By the end of the war, the city had become a center of Zionist activity – its location on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea once again allowing it to serve as a pathway for immigrants on their way to the Land of Israel. Only this time, those departing the party had survived the Holocaust. Thousands of survivors from across Europe passed through the port on their way out of the continent that had become one big Jewish graveyard to fight in the 1948 War of Independence in their ancestral homeland. During their short stay in Trieste, their voices filled the gigantic hall of the Great Synagogue of Trieste on Via Gaetano Donizetti with prayer.
Daniel Recanati, a Zionist activist in the city, tells me how the synagogue's foundations were laid in 1908, at a time when the existing synagogues were no longer able to serve the growing Jewish community. "The synagogue was a symbol of Jewish power in Trieste," he said. "In its gigantic dimensions and its beauty," Recanati said it continues to cast a shadow over its surroundings some 100 years after it was built.
Anti-Semitism insurance
In the synagogue's imposing prayer hall lies a pile of prayer books that embody the city's mix of Jewish history over the past 200 years. But this mixture of styles is not limited to just the prayer books. It is felt in the synagogue's architecture, as well as the conduct of the community. "Still today, during the Shabbat prayers, we use the Ashkenazi liturgy, while on the other days of the week, we use the Sephardi," Recanati says.
As for the building, it is so unique that one cannot associate it with one particular school of architecture. Designed by two local Christian architects, Recanati notes that "unlike the Oriental styles that sought to borrow from the Byzantine or Muslim construction, they created a synagogue that is based on the Roman principles of construction.
Following the legislation of the race laws, the synagogue was shuttered in 1942 and desecrated. Nazi soldiers turned it into a warehouse for valuable items and works of art stolen from Jewish families. But they were unable to locate the holy vessels made of silver that had been hidden before the Nazi invasion in a hiding place inside the building. These treasures survived, but the synagogue's prayer hall, able to seat 1,400 people, hasn't been filled to capacity in decades.
The Jewish community's deep roots, said to have been planted when a number of Jewish families from Germany and Bohemia that served as money lenders to the local government and arrived in the city in the year 2100, serve as a sort of anti-Semitism insurance policy. The Jews of Trieste are not seen as strangers, to the point that the language of the locals has been influenced by words in Hebrew. The Judeo-Italian language contributed to the Italian dictionary throughout the country, with Jewish concepts moving to the local vocabulary albeit with some changes to their pronunciation. For example, the Hebrew word for spy, "meragel," was adopted by the locals who use the term "marachella" to refers to a trick or fraud. Trieste's non-Jews have also been known to tour the of the Great Synagogue of Trieste and show up to Bible study classes out of sheer curiosity.
And yet, the winds of Israel hatred have also made their way to a city that never experienced them before. Last year, at a ceremony marking the fall of Italian fascism, some in the audience waved Palestinian flags. Trieste Rabbi Alexander Meloni refused to remain silent. In a show of protest, he left the ceremony, and all of the Jews in attendance followed suit. The local media, it should be noted, sided with Meloni on the matter.
