This poster from the Museum display at the Sephardic Synagogue
gives graphic voice to the restrictions placed on Italian Jews
with the enacting of the Manifesto of Race in 1938. It was the
repetition of an age old pattern of tolerance-intolerance for
the community in Pesaro. There had been a Jewish settlement in
the town since 1214; a community that had lived mostly at peace
and in a live-and-let-live arrangement with the local rulers and
populace. Over the years other Jewish merchants – expelled from
the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies - came into the town and
integrated into the Italian community. However with the
persecution, expulsion and execution, under Papal decree, of the
Marranos of Ancona a new community of Portuguese (Shepardic)
Jews migrated to the town. A protest blockade of Ancona harbour
shed new importance on Pesaro and Guidubaldo Della Rovere was
more than happy to welcome merchants, doctors, artisans and
commerce into his Dukedom. Though his attitude was to turn less
welcoming when the harbour p