The Shoah in Italy: A Lexicon for Auschwitz: Primo Levi and Natalia Ginzburg

In Italy, Primo Levi’s fictional work is recognized as the most authoritative, profound and multifaceted account of the tragic human experience in the Nazi Lagers. Through four of his main works, this course will study how Levi described that human tragedy often perceived as impossible to recount, even by those who survived it. The course will focus on how Levi, without hate or self pity, in an appeal for historical memory, expressed the demolition of humanity in the brutal and systematic lager system, an experience that he defined as an offense against human dignity. The last part of the course will study Ginzburg’s Lessico familiare in order to focus on how a detailed account of private events in an Italian Jewish family demonstrate the moral and civil degradation of a nation.

Required texts: Se questo è un uomo, 1947, La tregua, 1963, Il sistema periodico, 1975, I sommersi e i salvati, 1986, Lessico familiare, 1963, Natalia Ginzburg

Critical work: Robert S.C. Gordon, Primo Levi: Le virtù dell’uomo morale