Olga Tarcali, Return to Erfurt, Story of a Shattered Childhood: 1935-1945. Preface by Serge Klarsfeld and an introduction by Susan Zuccotti (CPL Editions 2015)

The power of this book derives from the immeasurable tragedy of the Shoah, viewed through the plight of the Spiers, a German Jewish family from Erfurt, Germany, flung into the heart of the violent anti-Semitic persecution. --Serge Klarsfeld

Roberto Bassi, Skirmishes on Lake Ladoga,
Introduction by Daniel Mendelsohn (CPL Editions 2015)

The child's eye view is, a great advantage in the narration of the gradual, awful erosion of Jewish rights and Jewish dignity as the war progresses: the young Bassi's mute incredulity, when he is expelled from his classroom, when a teacher points him out as an "enemy of the Fatherland", his unquestioning acceptance of historical ironies- moments such as these conspire to quietly but forcefully bring home the reality of a disaster that was, in fact, "incredible" in any normal context. -- Daniel Mendelsohn Read

Both memoirs are published by CPL Editions. Order them before the program!

PRIMO LEVI'S COMPLETE WORKS

Readings from Primo Levi's Complete Works continued, on October 21st at the Center for Fiction, with a presentation by Paola Mieli and Joan Acocella of the science fiction story Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge.

Paola Mieli's essay, A Silver Martian: Normality and Segregation in Primo Levi's Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge

is published by CPL Editions.

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PRINTED MATTER | THE ECLIPSE OF ANTIFASCISM

Manuela Consonni

The Eclipse of Anti-Fascism seeks to cover the history of the "anti-fascist paradigm", namely anti-Fascism held as the backbone of the Italian Republic, from its inception to its decline.

Its subtitle, Resistance, the Jewish Question and Political Culture in Italy, 1943-1987, explains the non-systematic structure of the text, which is organized in three parts, each dedicated to a different period of this history - the period up to 1948, then the one between 1948 and 1967, and finally the one covering the 1970s and 1980s to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the communist world - moving along as a historical biopsy that spans political and historical debates, the press, specific journals, various write-ups and countless reports.

Diverse sources are used in the discussion, emphasizing its different aspects, all of them converging to show how anti-Fascism, with its history and culture, has represented the highest point of moral and ideal tension the Italian Republic experienced throughout its history.

The book is substantiated through the use of three intertwining approaches: Italy's political history, the memory of Fascism and the Resistance, that of political deportation and the memory of the extermination of the Jews.

Addressing simultaneously politics and the political culture of anti-Fascism, this study sheds new light on the relationship between political deportation and Jewish extermination in Italy, between Italians and Jewish Italians, distinguishing the act of writing from its reception over time. This volume also seeks to show how, since the beginning, the Jewish world of the post-war era assumed an independent role, that of political protagonist in the triumph over Nazism and in the building of the Italian democracy.

Pillar of this reconstruction is Primo Levi -his work functioning, in all three sections, as common thread and model for different approaches to analyzing anti-Fascism, deportation and extermination, as well as ethics and politics. Levi's words from If This Is a Man to his final book, The Drowned and the Saved, accompany and articulate the pages of this study. Read