The origins of the research

What can remain of a community when much of its documentary record has disappeared and its religious identity is no longer readily visible? Robert Schomacker approaches this question through the history of his own family and the town from which some of his ancestors came.

In the preface, he recalls that in 1936 his father, an official of the State of Hamburg, had to provide evidence of his own “Aryan” ancestry and that of his wife. The surname Lia, borne by ancestors from Cassino, had caused anxiety because it might suggest Jewish descent. Decades later, family research led Schomacker back to this unresolved question. Visits to Cassino, conversations with local historians and work in the archives of Montecassino gradually widened a personal inquiry into a study of the town’s past.

Throughout the book, the historical town is generally called San Germano, the name it retained until 1863. Its story is closely connected with the Benedictine Abbey of Montecassino and the territory known as the Terra di San Benedetto. For the wider setting, see the ASH study Cassino: The Gate of Ancient Rome.

The principal themes

Names and the continuity of families

Surnames form a central part of Schomacker’s investigation. He compares names recorded in the cadastral registers of San Germano with material from Jewish family histories and other communities. Changes in spelling, movements between places and the persistence of names become clues through which he develops his interpretation of local ancestry.

The memory of places

The Borgo Ebrei, the Giudecca, streets, buildings and former neighbourhoods give the inquiry a geographical dimension. Maps and photographs help the reader follow the author’s attempts to locate Jewish settlement and interpret traces that survived in the town before the destruction of the Second World War.

Migration and settlement

The local story opens onto the movements of Jewish populations across Italy and the Mediterranean. Schomacker considers the circumstances that may have brought different groups to the Terra di San Benedetto, including the upheavals surrounding the expulsions at the end of the fifteenth century. These movements provide a wider setting for the family and place names examined in the book.

Life under the lordship of Montecassino

The abbey’s authority is essential to the study. The author examines legal status, taxation, property and the relations between Jewish inhabitants and the institutions governing the territory. Religious difference appears within the practical arrangements of everyday life: rights, obligations, protection, economic interests and restrictions.

Trades, knowledge and social life

Weaving and dyeing, silk, needle-making, metalworking, commerce and medicine all enter the discussion of occupations. Alongside these activities, Schomacker investigates social distinctions, traditions and the knowledge that families may have brought with them. His concern is the place of Jewish inhabitants within the economic and social history of the town.

Conversion, assimilation and later history

The later chapters consider conversion to Christianity, assimilation and the effects of the Counter-Reformation, before following the narrative through the Enlightenment and subsequent periods. A central question is how families might remain in a locality while the memory of their earlier religious identity becomes increasingly difficult to trace.

Evidence and open questions

The book brings together published histories, cadastral registers, the Regesti of the archives of Montecassino, genealogical material, oral traditions and comparisons with other places. Schomacker places these different kinds of evidence alongside one another to construct a possible account of Jewish life in San Germano.

His own assessment is an important guide to reading the work:

The subtitle therefore describes the character of the undertaking: a starting point for further research. The author argues that Jewish tradition occupied a larger place in Cassino’s history than earlier accounts had recognised, while acknowledging the fragmentary nature of his reconstruction and inviting further archival work.

Memory and understanding

Schomacker closes by explaining why he has pursued this history. Remembering earlier inhabitants means asking how they lived, what shaped their choices and what later generations may have forgotten. His final invitation extends beyond one family or one town:

For ASH, this reading offers an occasion to consider how the histories of Jewish and Christian communities intersect in local life. Attentive study begins with listening to the records and to the questions they leave open. The ASH timeline of Jewish history provides a complementary chronological overview.

Questions for the reader

1. Which parts of the argument rest on explicit documentary references, and which develop through comparison or inference?
2. How do family names, occupations and the names of places preserve different kinds of historical memory?
3. Which unanswered question in this book would be most useful to pursue through further research?

The book’s twelve chapters

The page references below correspond to the English PDF presented on this page.