Our Program Calendar
Public and Academic Programs
Public programs
Centro Primo Levi’s programs explore the diversity of the Italian Jewish experience and take inspiration from Primo Levi’s humanism and his quest to explore the past and understand different aspects of the world we inhabit.
Italian Jewish Studies Seminars
A collaborative initiative of Centro Primo Levi with the NYU departments of Italian, History and Judaic Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò to develop a context for the study of Italian Jewish history, generally absent from curricula of Italian studies and only marginally featured in Jewish Studies programs.
Primo Levi Forum
Readings, roundtables and presentation periodically connect scholars and practitioners from the many fields of the humanities and sciences that defined Levi’s intellectual horizon. Year after year, contributions from all over the world demonstrate
Memoria
Studies and research on the history of the anti-Jewish persecution in Italy, fascism and the post-war construction of memory. A collaborative effort of the Consulate General of Italy, Centro Primo Levi, the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò,
CPL Editions & Printed Matter
La iente de Zion
La iente de Zion is a Jewish liturgical poem composed for the observance of the fast of the 9th day of the month of Av (Tisha B’Av). It appears in two prayer books of the Roman rite compiled in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was...
My Betrayed Garden
But what most displeased me, personally, was that my characters were used so freely, with so little reference to my work, in a way that would have been inappropriate even if they were marionettes. Although fine folk, the Finzi-Continis w...
Formiggini’s Talking Cards
A brilliant publisher, Formiggini started running his business in the first decade of the twentieth century in his hometown of Modena. He then moved to Genoa and finally to Rome in 1916. The wit and refinement of his publications, as...
Piero Dello Strologo (1936-2022)
I met Piero Dello Strologo many years ago in Genova. He was younger than I am today and became the initial inspiration for what, years later, would be established as Centro Primo Levi in New York. I arrived at his office in...
Interview with Peter Cole
Going elsewhere might just show you who you are and what you might become. That physically, psychologically, imaginatively, you have to work your way into each of the “languages” involved in any broadly translational situation. And...
Under Gentile Eyes
As the reader will no doubt recognize, Under Gentile Eyes, the title chosen for this inquiry into some of the sundry ways in which Jews and Judaism have been represented in Christian Europe throughout the centuries, is quite blatantly an...
Jewish Citizens
The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah opened its third exhibition entitled Beyond the Ghetto. Inside Out curated by Andreina Contessa, Simonetta Della Seta, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, and Sharon Reichel. Image: Ketubah...
The Time of Love
Italian Jews Between Segregation and Emancipation (1849-1871). The Jewish Museum of Rome opens a magnificent exhibition dedicated to the period that goes from the second Roman Republic to the annexation of Rome to unified Italy: Seve...
Il Rinnegato: The Scandalous Life of a 19th Century Kabbalist
On a November morning in 1840, a young boy discovers the body of David Ajash, an Italian kabbalist rabbi of Algerian origin, under an olive tree, in the outskirts of Nablus. Homicide or suicide? The doubt remains, past the end of Il Rin...
Primo Levi: An Identikit
Over the last seventy years, Primo Levi (1919–87) has been recognized as the foremost literary witness of the extermination of the European Jews. In Primo Levi: An Identikit, a product of twenty years of research, Marco Belpoliti expl...
The Indecipherable Mess of Human Life
Due vite (Two Lives) by Emanuele Trevi is a luminous, beautifully written wisdom book. It was deservedly awarded the 2021 Premio Strega, Italy’s major literary prize, and awaits the foresight of an American publisher for an English tr...
A Chemist’s Book Changed John Barnett’s Life.
Chemist and writer Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table—a memoir in the form of short stories about elements—closes with a chapter called “Carbon,” which tracks a single atom through time and space. Graphic designer and illustrator ...
Angelo Fortunato Formiggini: An Italian Publisher
Eliza Pederzoli’s biography L’arte di farsi conoscere. Formiggini e la diffusione del libro e della cultura italiana nel mondo (Roma, Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, 2019) offers an in-depth survey of the archival resources on the...
Slavery and Conversion in Papal Rome
Scholar of forced baptisms Marina Caffiero talks about the House of Catechumens and the various groups that were forcibly or voluntarily interned there to be converted to Catholicism. Like ghettos a product of the Papal...
Marina Jarre’s Distant Fathers
Rewarding memoirs, like portraits, introduce us to a central character interacting with his or her world at a specific time in history. We are drawn to a memoir when all those elements come alive and acquire relevance for the reader. Mar...
The Persecution, Exclusion and Exile of Jewish Musicians
Italian Jewish Musicians and Composers under Fascism–Let Our Music Be Played, (Palgrave, Macmillan 2021), edited by Alessandro Carrieri and Annalisa Capristo, is a long-overdue comprehensive overview of how Mussolini's anti-Semitic le...
A Memory of Le Murate
I was released from Le Murate three days ago. In my section, there was an inmate from Prato – the nicest man, who had been “in” for the past fourteen months for some textile deal gone wrong. He knew all the ins of the prison rules and...
Remembering Nedo Fiano z’l
What has characterized my whole life has been my deportation to the Nazi extermination camps. My entire family ended in Auschwitz with me; they were all exterminated. At eighteen, I was orphaned, and this devastating experience made me...
For a Memory of Culture Beyond Victims and Perpetrators
Has a much-vaunted cosmopolitan Holocaust memory — with its linked slogans of “Never forget!” and “Never again!” — simply failed to prevent the rise of the right or, more darkly, might it even be implicated in that political ...
Legitimizing Fascism Through the Holocaust?
As the Holocaust becomes increasingly present in the political discourse in the US, Europe and Israel, we republish this reflection by Emiliano Perra written in 2010. The article surveys the transformation of the public image of the...
Research & Learning
Primo Levi
Primo Levi's life and work through archives and research institutions, a short film and an anthology of essays....
Chazanut
Created in memory of Erna Finci Viterbi z”l, this resource aims at sharing with users across the world the Italian Jewish liturgy and cantorial traditions Coming Soon
The Shoah in Italy
A brief guide to the study of the persecution of the Jews in Italy based on material provided by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan....
Americordo
Documenting the lives of Italian Jewish exiles in America, their struggles and achievements, through research, oral history and family albums....
Italian Jewish Press
Guided portal to the Italian Jewish press of 19th and 20th centuries. Created in collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Coming Soon
From & For the Press
An Interview with Valentina Pisanty in Journal of Perpetrator Research
By Emiliano Perra Interview with Valentina Pisanty on her book The Guardians of Memory and the Return of the Xenophobic Right (New York: Centro Primo Levi Editions, 2021), a provocative investigation of the weaknesses of dominant ...
Valentina Pisanty in Confronting Hatred: Neo-Nazism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust Studies Today
By Janet Ward at University of Oklahoma for The Journal of Holocaust Research The six contributions to Volume 35, Number 2 of The Journal of Holocaust Research (2021), ‘Confronting Hatred: Neo-Nazism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust S...
About Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco in our book Exile and Creativity
As appearing in https://mariocastelnuovotedesco.com/ Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is among the men and women featured in Exile and Creativity, a volume of essays inspired by a series of programs held in 2017-18 by the Italian Cultural I...
Valentina Pisanty in EuropeNow
Alexis Herr The Guardians of Memory and the Return of the Xenophobic Right (CPL Editions 2020) by Valentina Pisanty addresses the dramatic rise in racism and intolerance among countries where memory of the Holocaust is pursued wi...
Gangster State: Laying Bare Mussolini’s Murderous Regime
One spring day in 1937, two Italian men were found murdered on a country road in Normandy; their carotid arteries had been severed. Carlo Rosselli and his younger brother Nello had fled to France from Fascist Italy. (more…)
Jewish Book Council: Book Review of Mixed Messages
The Jewish community of Italy is over two thousand years old, and yet, when Eleanor Foa’s father tried to explain their Italian Jewish heritage, it was always a struggle. (more…)
The Oral History Center: Los Corassones Avlan
We all have stories in our archives. We know it is best to bring the stories out, for people to hear and see them. But how? One idea: Involve the narrator, maybe she or he will have an idea. That was the case in a recent ev...
I.Italy: The Life of a “Foreign Italian”
Leo Yeni, an Artist’s Paper Life, presented by NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò in collaboration with Centro Primo Levi showcases the life and struggles of a man through his art. To some, the show, curated by Cynthia Madansky, is an i...
Devoted Messenger: Eleanor Foa
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Haaretz: From Rhodes With Love: Memories of Jewish Life on the Greek Island Celebrated in NY Show
In unconventional exhibit, the public is encouraged not only to touch the displays but to converse with Stella Levi, a 96-year-old Jewish native of the island that was occupied by the Nazis in World War II. By Danielle Ziri for the Ha...
Editors’ picks from our partners and elsewhere
The Primo Levi Archive in Turin
The International Primo Levi Studies Center offers scholars and students access to Primo Levi's work and to research on different aspects of his writing. The archive collects the editions of his works, translations, critical...
CDEC Digital Library
CDEC Digital Library a web portal dedicated to the history, culture and traditions of the Jews in Italy from the emancipation era the present as well as to the largest collection, library and research body on the history of...
Archivio Ebraico Terracini
The Archive of the Jewish traditions and customs Benvenuto and Alessandro Terracini collects and preserves objects, documents and books from the Jewish tradition of Piemonte. Established almost forty years ago in Turin by a bequest of...
Jewish Museum of Rome
Discover the Jewish Museum of Rome's mappoth collection. Traditionally used to cover the sacred text between readings of different portions, these beautifully embroidered textiles are testimony to centuries of Jewish life in Rome.
Fondazione Fossoli
The Fossoli Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the concentration camp of Fossoli (Carpi, Modena) in its various phases (POW camp, national concentration/transit camp for Jews, DP camp and orphanage). The...
Franco Antonicelli Archive
Writer, public intellectual and publisher Franco Antonicelli was among the early opposers of Fascism, an activist of Giustizia e Libertà and later in the Comitato di Liberazione. He was responsible fo the first publication of Primo Le...
