Les Juifs de Gênes

The Jewish presence in Genoa, attested since the early Middle Ages, was intermittent, with the Ligurian Republic alternating between commercial tolerance and expulsion measures. Around the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, the city served notably as a transit port for Jews expelled from Spain after 1492, many of whom were kept in precarious conditions before continuing their journey. Sephardic merchants and Italian Jews (Italkim) were permitted to reside there for periods, especially from the sixteenth century onward, when the Republic sought to attract Levantine trade. The community always remained modest, subject to residency restrictions, before achieving a more stable existence after nineteenth-century emancipation. During the German occupation of 1943–1945, some Genoese Jews were deported.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗