Primo Levi davanti all’assurdo

Why can\’t we disregard the Shoah as a paradigmatic event of man\’s overpowering man? Adorno believed that it was no longer possible to write poetry after Auschwitz, so much had been the annihilating violence of the concentration camp universe. The Nazi-fascist ferocity breaks the lives of millions of deportees, denies their identity, depriving them of any form of right. The German command destroys community ties, subverts the laws of society, establishing a machine for the annihilation of man. Against the ideology of the race, the word of the witnesses survives and stands in defense. Primo Levi, who escaped hell, forged in his laboratory of chemist, witness and writer an unspeakable word, resistant to outrage. The author enters this laboratory and tries to observe its linguistic, psychological and social components which, as reactors of extraordinary power, trigger emotional reactions of extraordinary intensity in the reader. Primo Levi with scalding calmness calls us, in the face of the crimes committed, to our role as judges, honing our ability to reflect on the contagion of evil.