Note: In this post, I discuss the two periods of Fascist Italy’s occupation of southeastern France during the Second World War. While not philanthropic towards Jews, Mussolini did not share Hitler’s views on the “Jewish problem,” possibly influenced by his Jewish mistress. Many French Jews flocked to the Italian-occupied part of France providing some enough time to survive until the area was liberated by the Allies in August 1944. Among the survivors were members of my family.
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Over the years I’ve come across references that the southeastern part of France was occupied by the Italians during the Second World War. This is a topic that’s always fascinated me because it includes Nice along France’s Côte d’Azur, a city with close connections to both sides of my family. It’s been an enduring mystery how a few of my Jewish relatives survived there when the Nazi onslaught exterminated or scattered most of them elsewhere in Europe.
Nice is where my parents met, and where my mother lived with her mother following her parents’ divorce. Also, my father’s aunt Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck, and two of her three children lived permanently or temporarily in Nice during the war. (Figure 1) After leaving Germany in early 1938, Nice is where my father went trying unsuccessfully to obtain a permit to work in France as a dentist. Following my father’s two-and-a-half years of military service in the Royal Pioneer Corps after five years in the French Foreign Legion, he returned to Nice to resume his dental career. (Figure 2) Here is where he was arrested for practicing illegally as a “stateless” person before decamping to America, sadly never again to practice dentistry. Nice is where my parents would regularly vacation, and where my maternal grandmother lived and where I spent multiple summers as a child. It’s a place that holds bittersweet memories for me and my family.
Two of Hedwig’s children, Fédor and Heinz Löwenstein, have been the subject of multiple earlier posts. To remind readers, Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) was my father’s first cousin; he was the artist of the three paintings that were confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 that I retrieved in September 2025 from the French Ministry of Culture after an eleven-year legal tussle. (see Post 189) Nice is where Fedor returned to from Paris and Mirmande after becoming sick with a then-undiagnosed disease. He died there at 45 years of age of Hodgkin lymphoma and was buried in the Cimetière de Caucade in Nice. And I’ve often written about Fédor’s younger brother, Heinz Löwenstein, because of his fascinating wartime escapades. The third sibling, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein, is the cousin with whom my father was closest to and advised my father to join the French Foreign Legion in 1938, following my father’s flight from Germany. After emigrating with her mother and siblings from the Free City of Danzig in what I estimate was the early 1930s, Hansi settled in Nice and lived there for the remainder of her life.
Because none of my Jewish relatives were deported from Nice during the war, I researched the history of the Italian occupation of France seeking an answer. Like many things that took place during the Second World War, the explanation is often rooted in historical events that took place before the war, sometimes many years before.
During the Second World War, southeastern France experienced two distinct periods of occupation by Fascist Italy. (Figure 3) The first occurred when Benito Mussolini invaded France on June 10, 1940. This incursion followed closely on the heels of the invasion of France by Italy’s Axis ally Germany on May 10, 1940, initiating the “Battle of France.” Using blietzkrieg tactics, German forces broke through Allied lines, captured Paris on June 14, 1940, and forced an armistice on France on June 22, 1940, effectively defeating them in just over six weeks.
Italy’s June 1940 invasion had limited success even though their occupational army of 700,000 troops significantly outnumbered the French. The Italians faced numerous challenges, including inadequately light tanks, a lack of artillery and motor transport, and ill-preparedness for the cold Alpine climate. The French had established substantial fortifications along the Alpine Line, referred to as the “Little Maginot.” Nonetheless, following France’s rout at the hands of the Germans and their surrender, the French were forced to sign the Franco-Italian Armistice on June 24, 1940, two days after the cessation of hostilities, agreeing upon an Italian zone of occupation.
As a result of this armistice with the Italians, the French relinquished 831 square kilometers (321 square miles) in southeastern France. (Figures 3-4) This Italian-controlled zone, which included between 28,000 and 30,000 French citizens, was officially annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. The largest town contained within the initial Italian zone of occupation was Menton. The main cities inside the larger “demilitarized zone” of 50km (31 miles) from the border with the Italian Alpine Wall were Nice and Grenoble, although, unlike Menton, neither was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy though that was the plan had the Axis powers won the Second World War.
The second Italian occupation of southeastern France took place in November 1942 in conjunction with Case Anton, the German occupation of Vichy France. To remind readers, Vichy France was the so-called puppet and collaborationist government in southern France in the “zone libre” (free zone) that had between created by the June 1940 armistice between Germany and France.
Readers may wonder, as I did, what suddenly precipitated the German occupation of Vichy France in November 1942. Case Anton was primarily triggered by the Allied invasion of North Africa during Operation Torch on November 8, 1942. Hitler ordered the occupation of the “zone libre” to prevent an Allied landing in southern France and to secure Mediterranean coastal defenses. Basically, the successful Allied landings in French North Africa convinced Hitler that the Vichy regime could no longer protect its territory, forcing Germany to take direct control of the “zone libre.” A critical part of German motivation to occupy Vichy was also to seize the French Navy fleet anchored in Toulon. To prevent this, the French soldiers successfully scuttled most of their ships on November 27, 1942, rendering them useless to the Axis powers.
The November 1942 German occupation of Vichy France resulted in an expansion of Italy’s occupation zone in southeastern France. (see Figure 4) Italian forces took control of Toulon and all of Provence up to the river Rhone; the island of Corsica was claimed by the so-called Italian irredentists (more on this below). Nice and Corsica were to be annexed to Italy in accordance with the aspirations of these Italian irredentists, an action that never took place because of the Italian armistice in September 1943, following Italy’s defeat at the hands of the Allied forces.
Let me briefly explain Italian irredentism. The term originated from Italia irredenta (“unredeemed Italy”), referring to lands with Italian populations left outside the Kingdom of Italy following its unification between 1860 and 1870. Irredentism was the movement to annex territory considered culturally or historically Italian, such as Istria and Dalmatia. Istria is the largest peninsula in the northern Adriatic Sea, the majority of which now belongs to Croatia. (Figure 5) It also includes the historic region of Dalmatia, also primarily within modern-day Croatia, with a small portion of Montenegro, located on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Significantly, for the purposes of this post and its impact on Jewish people during the Second World War, Italia irredenta included Nice. Italian irredentism in Nice was the political movement supporting the annexation of the County of Nice to the Kingdom of Italy.
Readers are likely wondering what gave rise to Italian irredentism and the aspirations of their supporters that they were entitled to annex Nice. As I alluded to above, some events that took place during the Second World War have their roots earlier in history. During the Italian unification, in 1860, the House of Savoy, a noble and royal dynasty between France and Italy, allowed the Second French Empire, the government of France from 1852 to 1870, to annex Nice from the Kingdom of Sardinia in exchange for French support of its quest to unify Italy. As a result, the Nicois were excluded from the Italian unification movement, and the region has since become primarily French-speaking.
Discontent over annexation to France led to the emigration of a large part of the Italophile population; more than 10,000 people, a quarter of the population in Nice, voluntarily left for Italy. This emigration of Nicard Italians to Italy took the name of the “Nicard exodus.” Many Italians from Nizza moved to towns in Liguria, a crescent-shaped region in nearby northwestern Italy, known as the Italian Riviera. This gave rise to a local branch of the movement of Italian irredentists which considered the reacquisition of Nice to be one of their nationalist goals.
In support of the Italian irredentists, Benito Mussolini considered the annexation of Nice to be one of his main targets. Following the armistice between Italy and France in June 1940, the County of Nice was occupied by the Italian army and the newspaper Il Nizzardo (“The Nicard”) was restored there. It was directed by Ezio Garibaldi, the grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). For those unfamiliar with the elder Garibaldi, he was a charismatic Italian general, patriot, and revolutionary, who played a crucial role in unifying Italy. Born in Nice, he was vehemently opposed to the cession of his hometown to France.
Having strayed some to explain the geopolitical basis for Italy’s historic connection to Nice, let me share one intriguing thing I learned while researching the extent of Italian occupation of southeastern France following German’s occupation of the “zone libre.” This is personally intriguing because I’ve been a philatelist, a stamp collector, much of my life. As I noted above, following Case Anton Italian forces took control of Toulon and all of Provence up to the Rhône River as well as the island of Corsica. I quote from an entry on Wikipedia on the “Italian Occupation of France”:
“The area of southeast France actually occupied by the Italians has been disputed. A study of the postal history of the region has cast new light on the part of France controlled by the Italians and Germans (Trapnell, 2014). By studying mail that had been censored by the occupying power, this study showed that the Italians occupied the eastern part up to a ‘line’ joining Toulon-Gap-Grenoble-Chambery-Annecy-Geneva. Places occupied by the Italians west of this were few or transitory.”
Thus, the line connecting these cities marks the boundary that separated the Italian-occupied eastern zone from the German-occupied western area. The line roughly follows a north-south axis through the French Alps and Provence, extending from the Italian border westward to the Rhône Valley corridor. Figure 6 (Figure) indicates the Italian-occupied part of France between November 1942 and September 1943 extended all the way to the Rhone River, although philatelic evidence suggests otherwise, namely, that the line was further to the east. (see the red line on Figure 6)
So much for the background. Let me move now to the question of how the Italian occupation of southeastern France affected Jews.
The Italian occupation government was far less severe than that of Vichy France. After France’s fall in June 1940, Nice was in the “demilitarized zone” of France which as mentioned above extended 50km from the Italian Alpine Wall. It provided a safe haven for Jewish refugees from Vichy’s anti-Jewish laws. Also, as mentioned, after the Allies invaded North Africa in 1942, the Germans invaded the “zone libre” of southern France in November 1942. This caused many thousands of Jews to seek refuge in the Italian-occupied zone of France between November 1942 and September 1943, as Italian authorities refused to deport them and often shielded them from Nazi. Exact numbers vary but it is estimated that nearly 80 percent of the remaining 300,000 French Jews took refuge in the Italian-occupied zone, saving many thousands from deportation.
Though Mussolini was far from altruistic, he refrained from collaborating with Vichy and refused to persecute Jews or enforce yellow star badges. Mussolini did not share Hitler’s views on the “Jewish problem,” possibly influenced by his Jewish mistress, Margherita Sarfatti.
Apparently, an Italian Jewish banker named Angelo Donati also played a vital role in convincing Italian civil and military authorities to protect Jews from French persecution in Nice. Curious about this, I happened upon a 2014 Bachelor’s Degree Thesis written by a Ms. Maria Teresa Nisticò from LUISS Guido Carli, a private university in Rome, explaining Angelo Donati’s role.
Quoting: “Jewish are coming to Nice from everywhere: they know they have different perspective (sic) over there. In particular they have an important man, the Italian banker Angelo Donati, that devoted its (sic) life to realize the objective of saving all the Jewish that were living in Nice. He organized a committee that welcomed the Jewish arriving in Nice and helped them when Vichy officials were trying to arrest them. The main activity of such a committee was to create fake documents for the persecuted; documents where at least the word Jewish was absent. Donati was a (sic) honoured man: he played a decisive role in connecting the French and the Italian army during the First World War and he obtained the ‘Legion d’Honneur’ in France. Being smart, full of energy, without a Jewish surname and prestigious, neither Vichy nor Berlin were aware of its (sic) activity.”
Once again, this speaks to the strength of individual courage and ingenuity in times of unspeakable horror.
In any case, thanks to the fearlessness of people such as Angelo Donati, in January 1943, the Italians refused to cooperate with the Nazis in rounding up Jews in their occupied territory and even prevented German deportations from their zone in March. Although the Italians did not cooperate in deportations, they did intern some Jews in camps to keep them under surveillance; this had the effect of keeping many safe at least until the Italian surrender to the Allies in September 1943. This led the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop complaining to Mussolini about Italian military circles’ insufficient understanding of the “Jewish question.”
However, shortly after Italy signed the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies on September 3, 1943, Nazi forces seized control of the Italian zone. The SS official responsible for Jewish affairs, Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s top aide, established his headquarters at the Hotel Excelsior several days later. This marked the start of a frightful crackdown on the Jewish population. SS officers systematically patrolled the city, arresting anyone who appeared Jewish, including those in mixed marriages, of certain nationalities, children, elderly, and invalid individuals. These individuals were interrogated at the Excelsior Hotel and subsequently deported to death camps from a nearby train station. The plaque today posted outside the hotel reads as follows:
“During the German occupation of Nice from September 1943 to August 1944, more than 3,000 Jews including 264 children were arrested in the Alpes-Maritimes, Basses-Alpes and the principality of Monaco and deported by the Gestapo in application of Nazi anti-Semitic ideology.
Before being transferred by rail to the Drancy camp near Paris from where they were sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp, the victims had been interned in the Excelsior hotel, which became an annex to the Drancy camp and was requisitioned by the Germans because of its proximity to Nice station.”
As a related side note, Alois Brunner, who it is estimated orchestrated the deportation of 23,500 Jews from France to death camps, remained one of the top Nazis who evaded capture after the war. He lived freely and reportedly passed away in Damascus around 2010.
So much for the lengthy discussion on the geopolitical situation in southeastern France during the periods of Italian occupation of the area during the Second World War.
Nice was liberated from Nazi occupation on August 28, 1944, meaning that from roughly September 3, 1943, signing date of the “Armistice of Cassibile,” onwards until almost the end of August 1944, Nice and other previously Italian-occupied parts of France were controlled by the Nazis. How my Jewish relatives survived in Nice under Nazi rule for almost a year remains an enduring mystery.
Let me briefly talk about my father’s beloved sister, Suzanne Müller, née Bruck (1904-1942), who did not survive the Holocaust. She and her husband, Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945), were caught up in the expulsion of non-Italian Jews from Italy in September-October 1938. My aunt’s husband, 33 years older than her had two children from his first marriage. His married daughter, roughly the same age as my aunt, had a brother-in-law who owned a fruit farm in a small town in Fayence, France in the Var Department. When my aunt and uncle left Fiesole, Italy in 1938, they immigrated there. My aunt and the owner of fruit farm were arrested by the Vichy French on August 24, 1942, and murdered in Auschwitz. While I’m always hesitant to engage in “what ifs,” I wonder whether they might have survived had they relocated to Nice in the Italian-occupied part of France, roughly 42 miles east? (Figure 7)
One final thing before I conclude this post. My wife and I just returned from Paris where the three surviving artworks painted by Fedor Loewenstein, my father’s first cousin, confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940, that are now in my possession are on display at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme (MAHJ) to whom I’ve loaned them. In connection with interpretive materials developed for this exhibit, I learned about the so-called Vel’ d’Hiv roundup. This was a mass arrest of more than 13,000 Jews that took place in Paris on 16-17 July 1942, by the Vichy French police at the behest of the German occupational authorities. This was roughly a month before my aunt Suzanne was arrested in the “zone libre” of France also by the Vichy French. While I can pretend to understand how the Vichy French would collaborate in the area they had administrative control over, I was flummoxed to learn they would also assist the Nazis in areas they did not administratively control.
This speaks to the true extent of French collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of Jewish people during the Second World War. On a more personal level, it speaks to the complex relationship my family has with France, a legacy that transcends the tragedy that befell my own aunt. In a few years after I’m done loaning the three Fédor Löwenstein paintings now in my possession to various French museums, I will be forced to confront this dark history in deciding what to do with the artworks, whether to donate them to a French museum or bring them to the United States where Fédor wanted them to come in 1940.
REFERENCES
Byron, H. (2024, January 19). The French Riviera under Italian Rule During WW2. Heroine Journey Fiction.
The French Riviera under Italian Rule during WW2 — HANNAH BYRON
“Italian occupation of France.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation,
Italian occupation of France – Wikipedia
“Italian irredentism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 March 2026.
Italian irredentism – Wikipedia
“Italian irredentism in Nice.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 November 2025.
Italian irredentism in Nice – Wikipedia
Nistico, M. T. (2013/2014). Beyond GDP: exploring models and indicators of well-being. [Bachelor’s Degree Thesis, LUISS Guido Carli]. Bachelor’s Degree Program>Bachelor’s Degree Program in Political Science.