5/17/21

By Camilo Perez Bustillo

PRIMO LEVI, A JEWISH ITALIAN SURVIVOR OF AUSCHWITZ, ON THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL "DUTY OF WITNESSING":

“The history of the Nazi camps has been written almost exclusively by those who, like myself, never fathomed them to the bottom. Those who did so did not return, or their capacity for observation was paralyzed by suffering and incomprehension.” The survivors could witness their experience, a fragment of the historical event in which they had been involved, but their testimony did not reveal any transcendent truth. In other words, the “drowned” ..who had been swallowed up by the gas chambers could not come back to bear witness. They, rather than the survivors, were the “complete witnesses.”

From “Revisiting the Life and Intellectual Legacy of Primo Levi,” BY ENZO TRAVERSO, Jacobin Magazine.