The Holocaust features prominently in a number of recent Italian television productions, many of which have focused onudmembers of the Catholic clergy and on secular but pious historical figures. This article argues that such cultural products partakeudof a broader process of constructing a normative, ‘consensual’, and inherently conservative notion of Italian national identity forudthe twenty-first century. The chapter will combine two lines of enquiry. Firstly, it will situate these television products in the longtermudhistory of conflicting and often mutually exclusive memory cultures in Italy, each vying for recognition in the public arenaudthroughout the twentieth century. These fractured memory cultures find a common ground in the oft-mentioned myth of the ‘goodudItalian’. In the context of this long history, the article will then explore the challenge to fixed notions of Italian identity representedudby the recent wave of immigration to the country, and television’s insufficient engagement with these developments. In exploringudthe place of Holocaust narratives in contemporary Italian television, this article examines the medium’s role as public historian andudpurveyor of far-from-neutral cultural values in a specific moment of the country’s history.
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