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As scholars have said since the end of the Second World War, several thousand Jews (French and refugees) were not deported or delivered to the Germans. The Italian armed forces and civil authorities interned them in camps where living conditions were awful but by far better than in the Croatian or German extermination camps. This article answers the question as to why the fascist, racist and antisemitic regime, allied with Nazi Germany since 1939, refused to deliver the Jews living in the territories militarily occupied by the Italian armed forces after November 1942. It refers to generally unpublished Italian sources; it examines the events from a political context of military occupation and the difficult relations with the Vichy government and the Germany ally; it takes into consideration the nature and specific aims of antisemitism as well as the fascist ideology while acknowledging the total failure of the regime’s expansionist plans. The article rejects the notion of the italiani brava gente (the good Italians) as an a priori explanation of the events and verifies the hypothesis that the policy toward the Jews represented the most peremptory reaction to Nazi intervention in the area reserved for Italian affairs.