Fascist Plans for Mass Jewish Settlement in Ethiopia (1936–1943)

Daniel Summerfield’s claims about Ethiopian Jews, such as ‘[e]ven in the years following the official implementation of racist policy both in Ethiopia and Italy and despite the fact that ‘Ethiopian Judaism’ was effectively disbanded, […] their legal status under the Fascists was the same if not better than other ethnic groups in Ethiopia and that they were even at times granted extra benefits’, come across as absolutely incredible (regardless of Emanuela Trevisan Semi’s affirmation with them). However, they are easier to believe when we take into account this unorthodox variant of Zionism that some Fascists were seriously proposing:

Sir Noel Charles, the Counsellor of the British embassy in Rome, also expressed the view that the fascist racial laws might serve as a prelude to Jewish settlement in Ethiopia. In a letter of September 10, to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, he observed that “various indications” suggested that “it was not by accident” that the Italian decree of September 3, which “banished foreign Jews and Italian Jews nationalised (sic) since the war from Italy and Libya and the Aegean Islands, made no mention of Ethiopia.” Discussing the question of settlement in some detail he continued:

“Since the introduction of this and other decrees regarding Jews I have heard from several sources that the authorities have been suggesting to Jews who have complained that life in Italy is being made impossible for them, that a solution of their difficulties would appear to offer itself in emigration to Ethiopia. The Times correspondent now tells me that a colleague of his recently taxed the Ministry of Italian Africa with the intention of sending Jews to Ethiopia and elicited the admission that, while nothing had been definitely decided, it was in fact proposed that an area should be set aside suitable for both agricultural and industrial development to which both Italian Jews and foreign Jews at present in Italy would be permitted to go.

(Emphasis added.)

Thus, while the Fascists still favored segregation, they did not implement brutally anti‐Jewish policies in Ethiopia either, not out of any sincere compassion for Ethiopian Jews but merely to discourage them from emigrating: this was going to be the Jews’ home now, and scaring them off would have defeated that purpose.

Additionally:

One of the chief protagonists of the scheme for settling Jewish refugees in Ethiopia at this time was, interestingly enough, President F. D. Roosevelt of the United States who, desirous of deflecting Jewish immigration away from the States, wished, according to his Jewish aide Bernard Baruch, to establish a “sanctuary in Africa, financed by private funds and open to all refugees,” and on one occasion “sketched a map of Africa on a scratch pad, outlining the temperate, largely unpopulated areas where such a scheme might be put into effect.”

(Emphasis added.)