Italian and Polish Mathematicians Face Racial Persecution and Emigration: Backgrounds, Individual Fates and Global Aspects

Abstract

This paper provides a new analytical perspective on the socio-cultural interactions involving members of two main Italian research communities – the School of Mathematical Logic and the Italian School of Algebraic Geometry – and some of their Polish colleagues (Samuel Dickstein, Wiesław Jezierski, Alfred Rosenblatt et al.). I shall argue that the intricate network of relationships between Giuseppe Peano, Corrado Segre and their protégés paved the way for an intensification of scientific exchanges between Italy and Poland in the 1930s. The climax manifested in visits by Tullio Levi-Civita and Mauro Picone to Warsaw and Krakow. Simultaneously, this network fostered instances of remarkable cross-solidarity when Polish and Italian mathematicians faced a period of severe anti-Semitic persecution and migration. An appendix containing unpublished letters documents Rosenblatt’s role in assisting aspiring Italian refugees in securing positions in Peru.