Abstract
This essay considers how Primo Levi sought to preserve the memory of the Holocaust in a coming world without witnesses. To do so, I focus specifically on how Levi addresses his young readers in his last work, The Drowned and the Saved. I argue that Levi presents a new kind of Holocaust education in his last work, one that asks young readers to identify not with the figure of the victim, but rather, with the figure of the collaborator. Doing so, I suggest, encourages his readers to undertake a reflective understanding of their own potential for evil. In this way, Levi attempts to help readers, especially a younger generation of readers, cultivate an active and moral relationship to the events of the Holocaust as the survivor generation ages and dies, taking their testimony with them.
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Wexler, A.C. (2020). Primo Levi’s Last Lesson: A Reading of The Drowned and the Saved. In: Aarons, V., Lassner, P. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33428-4_3
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