In the period following the Second World War, Italy became an important, albeit temporary, transit hub for tens of thousands of Jewish survivors from Eastern Europe. Among them was a small group affiliated with the Jewish Labour Bund, a secular, socialist and anti-Zionist movement active in Tsarist Russia and interwar Poland. The BUNDITAL project analyses this group’s activities, its internal dynamics and its interactions with both the refugee community and Italian stakeholders, using this as a lens through which to explore broader issues relating to post-war displacement, political identity and the capacity of refugees to take action.

Drawing on unpublished archival sources in Yiddish, Italian, English, Hebrew, Polish and French, the research pursues four main objectives. Firstly, it reconstructs the history of the Bundist collective, offering a new perspective on the movement’s transformation following the Holocaust. Secondly, it examines the broader framework of international relief organisations (UNRRA, IRO and JDC) and the post-war Italian context. Thirdly, it analyses the political landscape within the Jewish refugee community, focusing on the tensions between the Bundists and the Zionist majority regarding migration destinations and the administration of refugee camps. Particular attention is paid to a key case study: the 1948 political trial for collaboration with the Nazis brought against the president of the Bund in Italy. Finally, the project investigates the regime of forced and restricted mobility and the routes taken by Bundist refugees outside Europe.

By focusing on the experience of Bundists in Italy, BUNDITAL sheds light on how refugees redefined their political identities, negotiated competing visions of national belonging, and interacted with the structures and forces that regulated their mobility. This analysis also challenges the notion of a linear and inevitable transition from survival during the war to identification with Zionism. In doing so, the project aims to fill a significant gap both in the historiography of Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy and in studies of the Bund in the post-war period.