Raffaele Cantoni

Raffaele Cantoni (1896–1971) was an anti-fascist Italian Jew who is best known for his efforts, perhaps daring, in saving Italian Jews from the Holocaust.

He was a DELASEM executive before and during the German occupation of World War II. He was also President of the pro-Zionist UCEI (Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane) or Union of Italian Jewish Communities. He was a Mason and a socialist.

Cantoni was born in Venice and studied economics and becoming a counselor to the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and president of the Fiduciaria. He participated heroically in World War I and took part in the conquest of Fiume, led by Gabriele D'Annunzio. “L' impresa di Fiume” was an incident where a 2,600 rebel army - the Grenadiers of Sardinia - from Ronchi Valsugana (then called the Ronchi dei Legionari), at Monfalcone marched to Fiume. Fiume (Rijeka in the Croatian language) and the city Kvarner (Carnaro) was then annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.

He took up socialist ideals, and espoused a critical attitude towards the fascist regime, and was referred to the Special Court. For his participation in antifascist actions he was arrested in 1930 with other opponents of the regime like Riccardo Bauer and Ferruccio Parri. In 1933 he became a leader of the Comitato Assistenza Ebrei Italiani (Committee for Assistance of Italian Jews) of DELASEM (Delegation for the Assistance of Emigrants) and other Jewish relief institutions. The racial laws of 1938 caused a riff between the new leadership of the UCEI (Dante Almansi and Lelio Vittorio Valobra) and the Antifascist Jewish components. He was connected with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress; he founded many Italian hakhsharot. A fervent Zionist, in early 1939 Cantoni also tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British ambassador in Rome to accept a plan for the enrollment of Jewish volunteers in their army, that plan would be realized only in the last years of World War II with the creation of the Jewish Brigade.

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