A Jewish Italienische Reise during the Nazi period

This article unravels the complexities revealed in the act of traveling to and photographing Fascist Italy in order to consider the intricacies of a particularly German-Jewish engagement with contested and highly politicized spaces and scenes. It examines four specific images in the album: namely, one photo from South Tyrol/Alto Adige along with the three images from a Fascist night-time rally in Venice. Together, they visually capture the Italian celebration of its conquest of Ethiopia in May 1936. I argue that for these German-Jewish tourists Italy served as a means to critically contemplate Fascist politics and to understand their place as German Jews in the contemporary world order. The coincidental timing of Italy's victory over Ethiopian forces afforded the travelers with an unusual, though not entirely unique opportunity to witness, and participate in, a Fascist spectacle, even as they negotiated its meaning. The timing of their visit also allowed the individual(s) to make both a visual and a brief textual statement about colonialism in its last throes, shortly before the Second World War broke out and before the beginning of decolonization. Met literatuuropgave.