SOURCE: “Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved: From Testimony to Historical Judgment,” in Shofar, Vol. 12, No. 4, Summer, 1994, pp. 47-58.

In the following essay, Druker traces Levi's development as an author.

Introduction

This essay traces Primo Levi's gradual development from concentration camp survivor and witness to historical and moral arbiter of the Holocaust. As one long committed to wider public recognition and comprehension of the Holocaust, Levi's perception of his role as a survivor-writer evolved with the passage of time and the historicization of the events. There are dramatic differences in content and rhetorical structure between his early and late Holocaust texts which raise important questions about the relationship of survivor writing to post-Holocaust history. What effect does evolving historical perception, an intellectualized form of memory, have on the process of writing about the Holocaust? And how, if at all, do survivor-writers like Levi...