The ancient connection between Naples and Marseille
Marseille can certainly be considered the French twin of Napoli even if the Neapolitan city remains unique for its natural beauty, history and monuments. It can, without a shadow of a doubt, be said that both have, for some decades, had the same problems. Marseille is depicted by the media beyond the Alps as the “Napoli of France“. Historically, both Napoli and Marseille are two cities founded by the Greeks of Phocaea and towards the end of the nineteenth century the colorful community of “Little Napoli” was established, a Marseille neighborhood where the first groups of Neapolitan emigrants settled. Marseille is, like Napoli, always halfway between truth and exaggerations, sometimes even of a racial nature.
On June 10, 1940, Italy left the “non-belligerence” and sided with the Germans, declaring war on Great Britain and France. During the night between June 21 and 22, some Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers attacked Marseille in two waves, thus contributing to destroying the port. It should not be forgotten, for historical accuracy, that France anticipated by a few years the oscillating and ambiguous Italian foreign policy. In fact, on 10 July its National Assembly voted to approve full powers to Pétain and 357 deputies and 212 senators voted in its favor, while only 57 deputies and 23 senators voted against, in total there were 569 votes in favor of full powers to Pétain and 80 against, with 30 abstentions. Until November 11, 1942, the Vichy government remained formally extraneous to war actions and was officially considered a neutral state with diplomatic relations with both Germany and the United States. On October 24, 1940, Pétain formalised his collaboration with the Germans by meeting and shaking hands with Adolf Hitler in Montoire-sur-le-Loir, thus returning Marseille to this neutral area. Faced with negative events for Germany, on November 12, 1942 the Nazis occupied the city and between January 22 and 24, 1943, the French police and German soldiers took over 20,000 people from the northern area of the old port of Marseille. On January 29, 14 hectares of the city were razed to the ground. René Bousquet, Secretary of State and head of the Vichy government police, signed the order for that nefarious destruction on January 14, 1943. The real reasons for the roundup and destruction of the area north of the “Porto Vecchio” and the “Le Panier” district by the Nazis were similar to those that occurred in Rome with the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine. Louis Gillet, speaking of racism and French collaborationism, described Marseille as follows: “An obscene place, of slums, one of the most impure pools, where the dregs of the Mediterranean gather… the empire of sin and death, the need for a regeneration had been recognized, which included its preliminary emptying.” Operation Tiger and Sultan, as it was called, controlled more than 40,000 people, evacuated 20,000 and arrested 6,000. On February 1, in the church of Saint-Laurent, the church of the Neapolitans, there was the first of hundreds of explosions that, in about ten consecutive days, destroyed 1,500 buildings and it was from here that the resistance against the Nazis was born. Contrary to this theory, most likely, Marseille began the Resistance immediately after the invasion of Belgium by Germany, in fact many refugees began to arrive in the city, including refugees from Alsace and Lorraine, English soldiers fleeing from Belgium, without forgetting Czechs and Poles as well as Italian anti-fascists and Spanish communists and anarchists. Among all these refugees were many intellectuals, artists and Jews.
In the meantime, something is moving, in fact the Marseille lawyer Pascal Luongo filed a complaint for “crimes against humanity” in the hope that the roundup that took place in 1943 in the Porto Vecchio would be recognized in 2019. He will also have to document what happened between January 22 and 24, 1943 when there were 20,000 evacuees and almost 1,600 deportations, without forgetting the cancellation of the popular neighborhood of Le Panier.
The Marseille writer of Neapolitan origin Michel FICETOLA dedicated himself to this research and wrote and signed an important book on the history of the city of Marseille: “Marseille La Napolitaine” where he introduces the Saint-Jean district, attacked by the Nazis in February 1943, which represented the historical cradle of the Phocaean city that, in 1906, had 20,000 inhabitants, half of whom were Neapolitan.
In this video published by Citypost the author explains that life for the Neapolitans who emigrated to Marseille was not easy and, often, they became victims of a campaign of political defamation and persecution that culminated with the roundups and destruction of their neighborhood during the Second World War.
A way, wanted and desired by several French people, to free themselves from a community whose children had managed, despite all the difficulties and obstacles placed in their way in a few decades, to impose themselves in the economic and political landscape, so much so that in 1935 one of their descendants, Henri Tasso, became its mayor. This Napoli rebuilt in miniature in the heart of Marseille was transformed into a real ghetto where, as happens to many immigrants today, they were accused of all the evils as well as victims of the usual clichés about their way of life. Inside this foreign enclave in the heart of Marseille, the Neapolitans managed to leave their mark. Les Napolitains de Marseille traces portraits of personalities with accurate and beautiful documentation, including photographs and postcards. Unfortunately, as often happens in Italy, we forget our own history and to this day at the Marseille Memorial, in the Porto Vecchio area, there is a list of all those deported by the Nazis, among whom the Jews stand out, while the bulk of Neapolitans who carried out the resistance are not there. Most of them were taken to collection camps in southern France and only recently have some of their descendants started specific research. Davide Brandi, head of the Lazzari cultural association, told us a little disappointed that: “In Marseille there is an annual commemoration and an exhibition with photos of those events. I go every year, but the sad thing is that in 79 years, in Napoli, no one has ever remembered this tragic event. Now I bring it to the attention of the Municipality and the Region……………we’ll see!”
