$9.99 on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Google PlayBenevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism by Alexander Stille (147,000 words, 38 illustrations)
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner, 1992
“Alexander Stille’s stunning achievement in Benevolence and Betrayal — the result of meticulous research and comprehensive understanding — is to give faces and personalities to people who might otherwise have been consigned to anonymity... ‘Frequently,’ Mr. Stille says, ‘the best and worst instincts resided within the same person.’ He puts this remark in parentheses; but it is this recognition that makes his book valuable, poignant and singular: Mr. Stille does not blunt the dense irony, whim, caprice, black comedy and braided motives implicit in every story — the paradoxes and ambiguities and contradictions; and he does not diminish the goodness of the good or exculpate villains of their villainy.” — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, The New York Times Book Review
“[A] highly readable and powerful new book of historical interpretation. Mr. Stille... hit upon the fine idea of telling what happened to five Jewish families during the Fascist era... the book delivers a lesson for anyone, of any religious background, who tries to make an accommodation with a flag-waving government: Dictators, benevolent or otherwise, cannot be trusted... an achievement that deserves to stand next to the most insightful fiction about life and death under Fascism.” — Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times
“[Stille’s] profoundly researched and beautifully written book concerns the plight of Italian Jewry, as revealed in the lives of five families during the time of Mussolini... He has a gift for the revealing incident and the apposite quote; he seems to have talked to everyone and overlooked nothing. Personal memoirs, private papers, half-forgotten meetings, all become part of this remarkable reconstruction. It was, the author reflects, ‘this world of subjective personal experience — how people loved and thought, what they did and why they did it — that I wanted to explore. Strangely enough, the existing books made little use of a great untapped historical resource, the thousands of Italian Jews who had lived through the period and whose numbers dwindle significantly with every year.’ One day they will be gone. But Benevolence and Betrayal will remain, an essential document of this inhuman century, a monument to its victims and a warning to its heirs.” — Stefan Kanfer, The Los Angeles Times
“The strength of this book lies not in any abstract formulations or general truths, whether about Italians, Jews, or human nature. Rather it derives from the voices of human beings, ordinary and extraordinary, as they reach us through deftly handled interviews, letters, and diaries. At its best, Benevolence and Betrayal confirms what Primo Levi said about the ‘sorrowful, cruel, and moving stories’ of himself and his fellow captives at Auschwitz. There are, he reported, ‘hundreds of thousands of [these] stories, all different and all full of a tragic, disturbing necessity.’ Some of them are told here by Stille.” — Edward Alexander, Commentary Magazine
“A beautifully written and moving book which I am sure will in time come to rank with the works of Primo Levi.” — Times Literary Supplement (UK)
“Benevolence and Betrayal, like all first-rate journalism, reshapes dusty history in the form of life — messy, tentative, poignant, and unforgettable.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer
“These stories are filled with courage and tragedy, spies and counterspies, escape and destruction. They are true, spellbinding, and sometimes almost unbelievable.” — Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“Alexander Stille, a journalist, has skillfully written an excellent portrait of the trials and tribulations of five Jewish families in Italy under Fascism. What makes this book important is that it goes inside the minds and hearts of the survivors and reports on their different experiences during the Fascist era... This book is at once the history of Italians and of Jews, as well as a detailed and in-depth description of their plight during the Holocaust and how certain members of these families, after the war, were able to cope with their traumas. It is an insight into the will to survive under adversity.” — Samuel P. Oliner, Shofar