Essays

I was born in Caraglio, Cuneo, in September 1908. There I lived with my family and received private education, studying in part with professors from Cuneo during the time of…

Opening remarks at Third Annual Symposium on Primo Levi I feel both honored and inadequate for the role of opening this symposium since I am neither a literary critic nor…

The Tragic, Enduring Relevance of Arendt’s Work on Statelness While Hannah Arendt is most known for her reflections on totalitarianism and the banality of evil, eighteen years of statelessness (1933-1951) brought her philosophical questions…

Should we assume, as we usually assume in ordinary parlance, that the word “symbol” signifies something beyond what appears at first glance, we should, I will argue, agree that Venice…

In the chapter Phosphorus in the Periodic Table Levi tells us of a love story that took place in 1942, when he was employed in futile research after an oral…

  Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish-Italian Relations in the United States Courtesy American Jewish Archives Journal, 56 NO. 1 & 2 (2004) Courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the…

I first met Primo Levi in February 1963, a month before the release of his book The Truce. I had just walked into the press office at Giulio Einaudi publishing…

The Italian Section of the Voice of America during WWII On the evening of January 20, 1944, in Lima, Peru, my father Antonello sat down to write a long letter…

Seventy years ago, on July 23, 1944, Jewish life on this Island of roses came to an end. Today we convene here in Kahal Shalom to mourn the interrupted and…