The Nazi genocide of European Jews has frequently been described as the paradigm of modern evil. More than any other event, it seems to oppose a group of guilty perpetrators to a mass of innocent victims. The Jews, after all, were not singled out for anything they might have done, but simply for who they were. As a secular Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, Primo Levi was well situated to observe this dynamic. Yet, in his final work, The Drowned and the Saved, Levi painted a radically different picture of the Holocaust. His exploration of what he called the "gray zone" drew attention to the space between the poles of good and evil and to the moments of blurring between victims and perpetrators. Without relativizing the nature of the Nazi system, Levi upended the conventional view of the Holocaust and drew attention to the considerable degree of complicity produced within the concentrationary universe. Read

PRINTED MATTER | THE FASCIST CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, Universit� della Calabria

Translated by Valerio Ferme, University of Colorado

From Internment to Deportation: Concentration Camps and Jews in Italy during World War II

Just before fascist Italy entered World War II (on June 10, 1940), the country adopted internment measures against "enemy subjects" who were present on its territory and against other categories of civilians, both Italian and foreign-born, believed to be "dangerous" or "undesirable" during the wartime period. Read

TABLET | THE MISSING JEWISH BOOKS

Michael Frank,Tablet Magazine, November 3, 2015

The Mystery of the Missing Jewish Books of Rome. Tracing the fate of 25,000 volumes lost to the Holocaust.

"This book is entirely the work of my hands, for I copied it for my own use. I am Nachman, son of Rabbi Samuel Foa. I copied it in the year 5315, when I was 15 years of age, in the house of the generous person Samuel, son of Moses Kazis." [...] the text, in several places, blacked out, FBI-style, by Vatican censors, as was commonplace in mid-16th-century Italy; the pages worm-eaten, almost translucent, and bound in creamy velum: Here is an early Hebrew manuscript like dozens-hundreds-of other early Hebrew manuscripts.

Well, not exactly. Sprinkled through the pages of Nachman's book are a handful of diamond-shaped stamps identifying it as having once belonged to the library of the Jewish community of Rome, a collection confiscated by the Nazis on Oct. 14, 1943, loaded on a freight train headed for Germany, and not seen since. Read

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | THE VENICE GHETTO

The Century Old History of Venice's Jewish Ghetto

Simon Worral, Smithsonian Magazine

Five hundred years ago, officials welcomed foreign Jews to Venice, but confined them to a seven-acre section of the Cannaregio district, a quarter soon known as the Ghetto after the Venetian word for copper foundry, the site's previous tenant.

In March 2016 the Jewish Ghetto in Venice will celebrate its 500th anniversary with exhibitions, lectures, and the first ever production of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in the Ghetto's main square.

Shaul Bassi, a Venetian Jewish scholar and writer, is one of the driving forces behind VeniceGhetto500, a joint project between the Jewish community and the city of Venice. Speaking from the island of Crete, he explains how the world's first "skyscrapers" were built in the Ghetto; how a young Jewish poetess presided over one of the first literary salons; and why he dreams of a multicultural future that would restore the Ghetto to the heart of Venetian life again. Read

ACADEMIA | VITERBI VISITING PROFESSORSHIP

The UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies invites applications for the Viterbi Visiting Professorship in Mediterranean Jewish Studies during the 2016-17 academic year. Rank is open; however, preference will be given to junior scholars, including post-doctoral students. The duration of the appointment will depend on rank, and includes the prospect of a full-year postdoctoral appointment. The successful candidate will be in residence at UCLA during the tenure of the appointment and is expected to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in his/her field of expertise. The candidate's research could focus on any dimension of the experience of Jews, including their interaction with other peoples and cultures, in the Mediterranean basin. Read

ACADEMIA | SYMPOSIUM ON PRIMO LEVI

Primo Levi: Tradition, Translation and Transmission.

November 17-19, 2015 - The University of Innsbruck and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

This conference delves into the complex relationship between testimony, storytelling and being-towards-death in the writings of Primo Levi. The reserved Jewish chemist and antifascist partisan from Turin is not only one of the most important writers of twentieth-century Italian literature, but also one of the most lucid witnesses of the Shoah. Read

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