THE WAIZEN FAMILY AND YOUNG LEO VALIANI IN FIUME

This paper analyses the integration of the Waizen family in Austro-Hungarian Fiume (Rijeka) and the political formation and national affiliation of young Leo Valiani until his first arrest in 1928. The local Jewish community and its position in the Fiuman multilinguistic context is still a relatively unresearched topic. Despite that, it seems that many Jews adopted the Italian national identity. Therefore, the Waizen family offers an interesting case study for an outline of the problem of Jewish integration into multilingual urban communities characterized by Italian speaking dominance. Additionally, through the family’s social network mentioned by Valiani himself, the paper seeks to address the process by which Leo Waizen gradually became the Italian antifascist Valiani. The research is based on the documentation regarding Leo Valiani and his family that can be found in the State Archive of Rijeka.