Victor Emmanuel III’s great-grandson apologizes to Jews in Italy for Mussolini’s racist laws

Manuel Filiberto of Savoy, descendant of the king Victor Emmanuel III who collaborated with the fascist regime of Benito mussolini, apologized to the Italian Jewish community for the racial laws that led to the deportation of around 8,000 Italian Jews from 1943.

“I condemn the race laws of 1938, whose weight I still feel on my shoulders, as well as the whole royal house of Savoy ”, writes the prince of 48 years.

The prince considers that the signature of his great-grandfather is valid “an unacceptable document“.

And in tribute to the Italian victims of the Holocaust, asked “officially forgiveness” on behalf of his family, according to this letter posted on his Facebook account and commented in an interview with an Italian television channel.

Manuel Filiberto de Saboya still remembered that his family contributed decisively to Italian unity and that in 1848 also enshrined full equality of rights to Italian Jews. In addition, several of its members were deported to Nazi concentration camps.

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Victor Manuel, who reigned from 1900 until his abdication On May 9, 1946, he died in exile in Egypt on December 28, 1947.

He abdicated in 1946 for cedes his throne to his son Humberto II, that he had to leave it a month later and go to Switzerland when the Italians decided to elect the Republic by referendum.

The 1946 Constitution prevented the return to Italy of royal couples and male descendants of the Savoyard family, which had ruled the country since its unification in 1861.

Parliament finally amended that provision in 2002, after Víctor Manuel de Saboya, 83 years old, as well as his son Manuel Filiberto, pledged allegiance to the Republic.