Until recently, the subject of Italian Jewry under Fascist rule received little attention in English-language Holocaust historiography. A combination of factors, including the size of the community and the relatively small number of victims – about eight out of every ten Italian Jews survived the war – partly accounted for this neglect in the historical literature. With the third highest survival rate after Denmark and Bulgaria, a consensus emerged that Italian Fascist persecution of Jews was not only mild but that Mussolini, the Italian armed forces, Italian civilians, and many church officials consistently protected Jews throughout the war years. Many scholars do not dispute the fact that while Nazi Germany began its genocidal assault on European Jewry in June 1941, Fascist Italy, as long as it remained a sovereign state, became a haven of safety and security not only for Italian Jews but for thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in both the peninsula as well as the Italian-occupied zones of France, Greece, and Croatia.