In the summer of 1940, six-year-old Beno Weiss’s family was awakened by pounding on the door of their home in Abbazia, then in northeast Italy. It was a year and a half after Benito Mussolini had bowed to the influence of Nazi Germany and passed the Italian Racial Laws, which stripped civil rights from Italian Jews. “Pandemonium broke out,” according to Beno’s widow, Susan.
Both King’s and Reilly’s offices said the aldermen are still open to renaming the drive after a worthy Chicagoan. “We urge interested individuals with concerns or input to contact our office,” King stated. Online petitions nominating journalist, suffragist, and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells and Italian-American saint Francis Cabrini, both of whom lived in Chicago, have garnered 1,725 and 410 signatures, respectively, to date. University of Chicago physicist Enrico Fermi—who fled the fascists after the racial laws passed because he was married to a Jewish-Italian woman—has also been proposed.
Cardoza added that while Mussolini “dragged his feet” about deporting Jews, the real credit for saving Italian Jewry should go to decisions made by people further down the chain of command, such as military leaders and local officials, as well as ordinary Italians.
