Press

By Alessandro Cassin, our Director of Publishing at CPL Editions

Valentina Pisanty: “The more Memory Culture grew and the more institutionalized it became, the more the deniers gained visibility”

By Gianna Pontecorboli

Al Center for Italian Modern Art la pellicola di Barzini e Marcellini

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”

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»

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.

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 the oral tale, where experience is “passed from one mouth to the next.” The direct line of transmission is significant: The story you hear from a living witness embeds itself into the mechanisms of memory, as I’ve learned firsthand, like no other. And yet such a transmission poses certain challenging considerations. Is a human being defined by the worst, most tragic thing that happens in her life? Should it carry more importance than the periods that bracket it? What does it mean to be the person who shares this particular heirloom?

I have been haunted by these questions over the past seven years, after a chance encounter changed my life and, along with it, my understanding of the power and responsibility of memory. Late for a lecture one evening in the winter of 2015, I dropped into a chair next to an older, elegant woman who looked me over carefully before inquiring why I was in such a hurry.

By Gianna Pontecorboli in La Voce Di New York

All’incontro parteciperanno anche Roger e Steven Sabbadini, fino ad ora proprietari privati dell’archivio.

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 “cervello in fuga”.

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 Holocaust memory culture, which often ends up being appropriated by illiberal and xenophobic forces.

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 Studies Today,’ were first presented at events organized by Janet Ward (University of Oklahoma) and Gavriel Rosenfeld (Fairfield University), including a seminar at a conference of the German Studies Association (October 2019, in Portland, Oregon), and a roundtable at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting (January 2020, in New York City). By inviting a group of German and American scholars to collaborate and explore the complicated continuities between the fascist past and today, amid the rise of populism, racism, antisemitism, and white ethno-nationalism in the United States, Germany, and beyond, we deepened our collective understanding of the connections and challenges for our teaching, scholarship, and public outreach. Mindful of the need for a more effective scholar-activist approach, this JHR special issue offers the first grouping of research emanating from our discussions; and our other, equally urgent focus, ‘Fascism in America, Past and Present,’ is currently a work-in-progress (coedited by Gavriel Rosenfeld and Janet Ward).

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 Institute in New York jointly with Centro Primo Levi. The essays examine the lives of intellectuals, artists, and scientists who were forced into or chose exile during the Fascist era.  Among those highlighted in the book are the Nobel-prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi, the sculptor Costantino Nivola, the writer and cultural figure Amelia Rosselli, and the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini. 

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 greatest vigor and,…

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.

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.

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 event in New York

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 interesting look into the mind of the artist, who like many other Italian jews was abandoned by his country, to others such as Lillian Spiegel, it’s one more step towards giving Leo what he never managed to obtain during his lifetime, Italian citizenship.

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…

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…

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…

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 few steps from…

La storia sconosciuta di una piccola comunità millenaria distrutta dal nazismo nell'isola delle rose: la mostra del Centro Primo Levi fino al 24 novembre. Gianna Pontecorboli for La Voce di New York Il risultato è stato possibile grazie al contributo…

omaggio a Stella Levi, che usci' viva da Auschwitz Alessandro Baldini for ANSA Cultura In una vecchia "carriage house" nel cuore del West Village torna a vivere la comunità ebraica di Rodi sterminata ad Auschwitz nel 1944. L'installazione dal titolo…