Legitimizing Fascism through the Holocaust? The Reception of the Miniseries Perlasca: un eroe italiano in Italy

This article discusses the rise in recent years of Giorgio Perlasca as a key symbolic figure in public memory constructs of the Holocaust in Italy, culminating in RAI’s broadcast of the miniseries Perlasca: un eroe italiano in 2002. After almost 50 years of silence, Perlasca’s complex profile of unreconstructed fascist and rescuer of thousands of Hungarian Jews has been instrumental in proposing different but coexisting narratives. On the one hand, it has reinforced the established myth of the ‘good Italian’. On the other hand, Perlasca’s personal history has implicitly concurred in downplaying fascist crimes before 1938 and in levelling out distinctions between fascists and anti-fascists. The study of Perlasca’s place in contemporary Italian memory culture sheds light on some of the country’s problems in coming to terms with the past.