Primo Levi |
|
Collection title
FIGU : Album di persone notevoli
First broadcast date
04/29/2010
Abstract
Life and work of the writer Primo Levi, born in Turin in 1919 and deported to Auschwitz in 1944. His most famous book, "If he is a man", was written in 1946, an autobiographical account of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. However, this book will have to wait several decades to meet the international recognition it is now credited. This documentary is based on an interview given by Primo Levi in 1983 when he went to Auschwitz, as well as numerous archival images showing prisoners and the horror of the camps.
Broadcaster
RAI - RAI Tre
Audiovisual form
Portrait
Primary theme
Languages and literatures
Secondary themes
- Historical heritages / Judaism
Credits / Cast
- Robecchi Alessandro - Author of original work
- Freeman Peter - Author of original work
- Vitellozzi Erica - Director
Map locations
- Italy - Western North - Turin
Original language
Italian
Additional information
Archival images of concentration camps .
Context
Primo Levi
Stéphane Mourlane
Primo Levi is one of the most important Italian writers of the twentieth century. Author of novels, poetry and essays, his work is marked by his Jewish background and his experience in German concentration camps. Keeping that memory alive, sharing it with as many people as possible, but also analysing it so we can all learn from it, he made an enormous contribution to the body of work on the Holocaust. He was born July 31, 1919 into a Jewish family which was well-integrated into Turin society. The Italian Jewish community, although small (between 45,000 and 50,000 people in the early 1930s), is one of the oldest in Western Europe. Anti-Jewish discrimination, epitomised by the creation of ghettos in Venice and other Italian cities in the sixteenth century, stopped in 1848 with the Statuto Albertino, which became the Constitution of a united Italy. In the early 1920s some Jews even joined the Fascist cause, a sign of how well they had become integrated in Italian society. At first anti-Semitism was not on the Fascist ideological agenda, and Jews became part of the totalitarian mesh which began in 1925. Primo Levi, like other young people his age, belonged to Avanguardisti, one of the Fascist youth organizations. The Manifesto of Race, enacted in 1938 without any pressure from their Nazi ally in Germany, but to give a fresh boost to the fascist regime, caused chaos and worse for Italian Jews, subjecting them to sudden and brutal discrimination. They became second class citizens, barred from most professions and their property could be confiscated. While at the University of Turin studying chemistry, Levi did not immediately suffer from this new law: "measures for the defence of race in the Italian schools” state that pupils and students already registered may continue their studies. Amid growing anti-Semitism he managed, thanks to the support of his teachers, to get his Ph.D. in 1941. He even found work in a Swiss company, less rigorous in the application of racial laws.
At first this policy was aimed at "discriminating but not persecuting", but in 1943 it was radicalized when Mussolini was overthrown by the Fascist Grand Council and set up the Italian Social Republic in the north of the peninsula. Levi's family took refuge in the Aosta Valley to escape the round-up of Jews destined for the Final Solution. Primo Levi took part in the "civil war", joining Giustizia e Liberta, the second biggest Resistance organization after the Communists. He was arrested by the Fascist militia December 13, 1943 and sent to the internment camp Fossoli in Emilia-Romagna, before being deported to Auschwitz with 650 others. He was assigned to Monowitz, one of Auschwitz’ three camps where those of the 12,000 internees who were not exterminated were employed in a nearby rubber factory. Malnourished and abused, many died anyway. Thanks to his professional skills, Primo Levi was employed as a laboratory assistant, thus avoiding the most arduous tasks. He also benefitted from the friendship and help of a compatriot to increase his daily ration.
When the camp was liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945, he returned to Italy after a long journey across Europe which he wrote about in The Truce (1963). Finding a job in the chemical sector, he began to recount the struggle and the organization needed to survive in the camp. Writing in a simple, clear, almost clinical style, he evokes in If This Is a Man the horror and process that was practiced daily at Auschwitz. Many publishers refused the manuscript, which was published in 1947 by a small publishing house with a print-run of only 2,500 copies. His account does not arouse much interest at a time when the Resistance and Anti-fascism were proclaimed to be the foundations of the Italian Republic established in 1946. Public opinion widely subscribed to this myth that minimized Italy’s responsibilities in the war, and, as in other European countries, refused to face up to the painful memory of the Holocaust. It was not until the Eichmann trial in 1961 that the period of self-deception was replaced by the arrival of the "age of the witness." In this context of a revival of personal memoires, If This Is a Man, reissued in 1958 by Einaudi in Turin, found a large and sympathetic public in Italy. The success of The Truce and the translations that followed gave Levi an international reputation which in turn helped to embed the Holocaust in the collective memory. The rest of his life, until his suicide in 1987, was devoted not only to writing and talking about the tragedy that left six million dead but also to learning the lessons from it through his books (like The Periodic Table in 1975 or The Drowned and The Saved in 1986). He gave many talks to every age-group, especially the younger ones.
Bibliography:
Angier Carole, The double Bond. Primo Levi. A Biography, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 898 p.
Ferrero Ernesto, Primo Levi : la vita, le opere, Torino, Einaudi, 2007, 138 p.
Mattioli Aram, « Viva Mussolini ». La guerra della memoria nell’Italia di Bersluconi, Garzanti Libri, Milano, 2011, 266 p.
Mattard-Bonucci Marie-Anne, L’Italie fasciste et la persécution des juifs, Paris, Perrin, 2007, 599 p.
Wieworka Annette, L’ère du témoin, Paris, Plon, 1998, 189 p.
