Primo Levi: testimony, atrocity (unpacking Auschwitz), moral conscience and the victims' memory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-8051.cllh.2024.230046Keywords:
Primo Levi, testimony, memory, Auschwitz complex, Shoah, Holocaust, extermination camp (Vernichtungstlager, VL, Totenlager), concentration camp (Konzentrationslager, KZ)Abstract
ABSTRACT: Primo Levi was a Jewish Italian chemist and writer who survived Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and left his testimony in Se questo è un uomo (1947), La tregua (1963), Il sistema periodico (1975), I sommersi e i salvati and other writings and interviews. Levi's voice is the voice of moral conscience, testimony of atrocity and memory of the victims (a voice that speaks of deportation, injustice, collapse and destruction). In the present paper, I trace a short biographical journey within the framework of the Holocaust (emphasizing that Levi did not commit suicide), I break down the gigantic Auschwitz complex (its three main camps and its 44/45 subcamps) (whose reality is often mixed and confused), differentiating, for the sake of clarity, the extermination camps (Vernichtungstlager, VL –also, Totenlager) from the concentration camps (Konzentrationslager, KZ), I describe Levi's testimony as memory and moral conscience, I examine his concept of survival and dignity, and I analyze Levi's theses about the absence of God in Monowitz and the meaninglessness of the victims' suffering in the KZ.
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