Outside the Middle East, Rome's Jewish community was probably the oldest. The first Jews came here in Roman times. In the 1400's to avoid oppression, Jewish groups came from Spain and Portugal. Liberal rules for Jews in the Papal States ended when Pope Paul III initiated the Counter-Reformation process in the mid-16th century. Converting Jews to Christianity became a priority. Pope Paul IV issued a bull revoking all the rights of the Jewish community and established the Roman ghetto. Pope Gregory XIII initiated the practice of forced baptism. Jewish children were often baptized against their parents' wishes and were taken away from their parents. Contact with families was forbidden, and a return to Judaism was punishable by death, as it was considered a heresy. Until 1668, during the Roman Carnival, Jews were forced to participate in street running, often naked.
It was not Nazi Germany that invented the ghetto. Legally sanctioned discrimination of Jews in the form of closing the entire community behind the walls comes from the papal bull issued in 1555. Pope Paul IV took away all the rights from Jews living not only in Rome, but throughout the entire Papal States. The principles in the document defined the separation of Jews from the Christian population. The ghetto was to be surrounded by walls. The gates were locked at night. Jews had to be easily recognizable, men in hats, women in a yellow headscarf, the color commonly used to characterize prostitutes. Jews were not allowed to have Christian servants; Jewish doctors could not care for Christians. Jews were strictly forbidden to mingle with Christians and achieve higher social status. Love and even friendship between Jews and Christians was strictly forbidden. With a brief interruption with arrival of Napoleon and the Roman Republic, the popes had power over the Roman Ghetto from 1555 to 1870.
In the streets of a former Roman Ghetto, we found small metal plaques embedded in the pavement. Each of them is to commemorate a person who once lived there. During a raid of October 16, 1943, they all even infants were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz.
