Natalia Ginzburg’s Essay “The Jews” and Its Trials

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorists killed two Israeli athletes and took nine others hostage. In an ensuing shootout at the airport, the nine Israeli hostages were killed along with five terrorists and one policeman. This chapter discusses Natalia Ginzburg’s controversial essay “The Jews,” which was published in La Stampa on 14 September 1972, only a few days after these horrifying events, and offered a commentary on the Munich massacre. “The Jews” generated a heated debate in the press, with prominent intellectuals such as Primo Levi, Alberto Moravia, and Cesare Garboli criticizing her political stance and engaging in discussions of Jewish identity. Some of these conversations took place in public, others in private, through personal correspondence. The chapter traces these conversations and makes available, for the first time, significant excerpts from the letters Ursula Hirschmann Spinelli and Primo Levi wrote to Ginzburg in response to “The Jews.” In addition to providing valuable archival materials, this chapter contends that Ginzburg’s essay was not only a political statement, but also an autobiographical reflection on her Jewish identity, as well as part of a broader and sustained discourse on history, politics, and morality. The chapter then argues for Ginzburg’s cohesive political thought, contextualizing it through an earlier essay, “Universal Pity,” which provides an apposite lens for reading “The Jews.”