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
Interview with Valentina Pisanty in HISTORICAL EXPERTISE
Valentina Pisanty: “The more Memory Culture grew and the more institutionalized it became, the more the deniers gained visibility” (more…)
Un film del 1948 finora sconosciuto racconta il ghetto di Roma e il destino dei suoi abitanti
By Gianna Pontecorboli Al Center for Italian Modern Art la pellicola di Barzini e Marcellini (more…)
New York ricorda le vittime dell’Olocausto: cerimonie al Consolato Italiano e all’ONU, La Voce Di New York
By La Voce Di New York A Park Avenue tradizionale lettura dei nomi dei deportati. L'Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite si riempie per l'evento "Home and Belonging" (more…)
Palatucci, il mito sfatato
By Giuseppe Galzerano in Manifesto Giovanni Palatucci non salvò 800 ebrei e non distrusse 5 mila fascicoli. Il centro Primo Levi di New York fa a pezzi la leggenda del poliziotto fascista a Fiume considerato lo «Schlinder italiano»...
‘One Hundred Saturdays’ Review: Afternoons With Stella – The Wall Street Journal
By Heller McAlpin in The Wall Street Journal A chance meeting with a Holocaust survivor blossomed into weekly conversations—and a journey into a vanished world. (more…)
What It Took for Stella Levi to Talk About the Holocaust – The New York Times
By Michael Frank in The New York Times There is something unique about the way cataclysms are preserved in oral histories. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin draws a distinction between the printed novel and th...
I documenti segreti di Mussolini all’Ambasciata Italiana di Washington
By Gianna Pontecorboli in La Voce Di New York All'incontro parteciperanno anche Roger e Steven Sabbadini, fino ad ora proprietari privati dell'archivio. (more…)
Fare cultura a New York nel nome di Primo Levi, Riflessi Menorah
By Massimiliano Boni Natalia Indrimi è Executive Director del Primo Levi Center di New York. In questa intervista spiega cosa significa esplorare e diffondere la cultura ebraica italiana negli Usa, e perchè non si sente un “cervel...
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 ...
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...
