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
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...
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 turn? ...
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...
Images of Rebirth and the DP Camps in Southern Puglia
What do we do today with these uplifting images? What do we imply when we attribute to them meanings that exceed the reality of that moment and of those people? While this is an open question for historians and for anyone...
A Note From A Refugee of 75 Years Ago
You are right in that that the spiritual tensions in the man can be eased by telling someone about them, what is more, I say that such tensions can be eased only by telling about them, what I can say...
Never Again What?
The ongoing relevance of Levi’s work is not its ecumenical lesson against intolerance—in the vein of Anne Frank’s diary for instance—but rather its ability to draw out the contradictory essence of dehumanization and resilience while...
Stateless: A Russian Childhood in Fascist Italy
When I was a child in fascist Italy, until the age of five I had never heard the word Jew or anything related to Jewish things. We were still part of the Soviet diplomatic staff in Rome. There were some...
Reluctant Jews
I have followed the evolution of the relationship with Judaism over two generations: that of my parents (my father was Sephardic, and my mother, Ashkenazi) and my own. These were all increasingly secularized Jews (this I mean by...
Weightless
The ease with which man adapts to weightlessness is a fascinating mystery. Considering that for many people travel by sea or even by car can cause bouts of nausea, one can’t help feeling perplexed. During month-long spells in space the...
Concentrated Modernity
Trial and length of imprisonment were not a part of the decision to send people to Boven Digoel and Theresienstadt. The people going to the two camps were never allowed to know the trajectory of their lives from the point...
Defoe as Possible Model
The structure of History, a Novel, departs substantially from Morante’s previous novels and poses some interesting interpretative questions. While critics have often pointed to similarities with the narrative structure of 19th-century...
Cinema as Archive
The memory Gitai is trying to archive is that of the foundation and striving of a young country: contradictions, aspirations, violence, opportunities, beauty, and all. He wants to preserve the competing narratives that constitute the...
From Fiume to Rio: Interview with Nora Tausz Ronai
In every family people spoke at least two languages, whether Hungarian, Italian, Serb, Croatian or German. Besides, of course, fiumano. In the schools and in court Italian and Hungarian were the official languages until Fascism...
From the Levant to the Tropics
It was from here, from the chaotic, sunny and tropical city of Rio de Janeiro, that most of the sources of Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s recently published book Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey through the twentieth-century (Farrar, Straus...
What Exactly Is a Concentration Camp?
L’internata numero 6/Internee n. 6 – The earliest known diary of daily life in a fascist concentration camp. In Fifty years, oblivion had enveloped the story of its author, the woman presented as “Internee n. 6”. The book’s epilogue...
Los Corassones Avlan
Conversations on Jewish Life on the Island of Rhodes. A pop-up installation to discover, discuss and imagine. New York, NY – September 24, 2019 – A fully immersive experience celebrating and exploring the lives of the Jews of Rhodes,...
Primo Levi: A Multilanguage Reading
Primo Levi at 100: A Multilanguage Reading The Italian Cultural Institute, Centro Primo Levi and the New York Public Library presented a day-long multi language reading of Primo Levi’s memoir If This Is a Man....
Periodic Words: Stranger
In the Preface to If This Is A Man, Levi warns the reader about some possible consequences of organized political systems: “Many people—many nations—, can find themselves believing, more or less consciously, that ‘every stranger is an...
The Language that Lived Twice
The almost daunting task of tracing the history of the Hebrew language, and that of the literature and of the people who have read it or spoke it, is achieved in 214 pages, balancing real scholarship with lightness, enthusiasm, personal...
Research & Learning
Primo Levi
Primo Levi’s life and work through archives and research institutions, a short film and an anthology of essays....
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
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 with the...
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....
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....
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...
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...
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 New York Times: She Grew Up on a Remote Italian Island. Then Came the Holocaust.
Recalling the once-vibrant Jewish life in prewar Rhodes, an island in the Mediterranean. By Michael Frank for The New York Times. Four years ago, while researching the war years in Italy, I was introduced to Stella Levi, now 96, probably...
Woman Around Town: Eleanor Foà’s Poignant Memoir About Her Italian Jewish Family
By Charlene Giannetti for Woman Around Town “To a child growing up in WASP America, with parents who had funny accents, feeling good about being an Italian Jew was a great gift. But like many gifts of childhood, I took...
Times of Israel: In the heart of NY, pop-up education center revives extinguished Rhodes Jewry
Near Washington Square Park through November 24, a living memorial dedicated to a 2,000-year-old Jewish community is manned by a spitfire nonagenarian survivor. Jordan Hoffman for The Times of Israel NEW YORK — In Lower Manhattan, a...
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...
