{"id":68424,"date":"2024-02-20T14:42:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T13:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/primolevi.org\/?page_id=68424"},"modified":"2024-07-04T11:28:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T09:28:06","slug":"our-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/primolevi.org\/en\/our-history","title":{"rendered":"Our History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Faced with the complex and precarious nature of the effects of torture, five nonprofit organizations working in the field of health and the defence of human rights created the Primo Levi Centre in 1995 dedicated to the treatment of torture survivors.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The center was created at a time of a pressing international political context: the war in the former Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda and, shortly afterwards, the dark years of violence in Algeria. The proximity and scale of this violence along with their political contexts posed a large challenge to the founding bodies of the Primo Levi Centre. At the same time, there was a growing attitude of suspicion towards asylum seekers in France and Europe. They were denied the right to work during the asylum procedure. Reception deteriorated. It was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain international protection. With the alarming international political context coupled with the policies limiting foreigners locally, the founders of the center, as professionals dedicated to working with survivors of torture and political violence, could not stay indifferent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under these conditions, support for these people had to be part of a wider associative and political project. It was not enough for clinicians to treat survivors of torture and become silent witnesses to the effects of torture and the deteriorating conditions in which exiles were received. They had to bring these harrowing facts to light by sharing their clinical experience with other professionals, giving them the tools necessary for proper care. Since its creation, the Primo Levi Centre has been involved in exchanges and interventions with other professionals and volunteers working with exiles, which led to the launch of the journal M\u00e9moires in 1997 and the creation of an official training center in 2002. This was followed by the organisation of a first conference in 2003 and the publication of numerous manifestos and advocacy reports to raise public authorities\u2019 awareness on the effects of torture in the reception and care offered to exiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Primo Levi’s Testimony<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The often invisible suffering caused by torture is complex and long-lasting. It is difficult for people who have survived humiliating treatment designed to destroy them as human beings to express their suffering. Drawing on the experience it has gained in supporting refugees in France, the Primo Levi Centre intends to bear tireless witness to the effects of torture. This ambition led to the choice of the name Primo Levi, for its symbolic value, synonymous with the refusal of inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment. The association received the support and agreement of Mrs Lucia Levi, deceased in 2009, to use her husband\u2019s name. Since his death in 1987, Primo Levi\u2019s fame has continued to grow in Italy, where he is now recognised as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and elsewhere in the world, where his books, translated into many languages, have made him one of the most notable Holocaust writer, greatly contributing to the memory of the Holocaust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I survived, I testified” <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Primo Levi was born in Turin in July 1919 into a family of Piedmontese Jews originally from Spain. He studied at the Azegli grammar school, where he was more interested in science than literature. Despite the racial laws instituted under Mussolini, entered university and brilliantly defended his chemistry thesis in 1941. As soon as he started working, he went to the Aosta Valley to join the Resistance. Denounced and arrested on December 13th, 1943, he was sent to an internment camp near Modena in central Italy. In February 1944, he was sent to Auschwitz. He was one of the 7,500 Italian Jews deported and one of the 88 who returned to their homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surviving Auschwitz <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944, that is, after the German Government had decided, owing to the growing scarcity of labour, to lengthen the average lifespan of the prisoners destined for elimination\u2026\u201d. These are the opening lines of his memoir, Se questo \u00e9 un uomo<\/em> (directly translated to If This is a Man <\/em>and published as Survival in Auschwitz<\/em> in the United States), in which, according to Primo Levi, his written words were just the physical manifestation of a story already written in his mind \u201cas an idea, an intention\u201d during his time at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0It took two more good fortunes for him to make the transition from the huge cohort of shipwrecked prisoners to the skeletal group of survivors: the good fortune to work as a chemist in the Buna factory and, perhaps even more importantly, the good fortune to have contracted scarlet fever when, faced with the Russian advance, the Schutzstaffel left Auschwitz and brought with them 58,000 prisoners \u2013 very few of whom would survive \u2013 leaving only the sickest behind. That was on January 27th, 1945. Eight months and 23 days later, at the end of a grand journey wandering through Eastern Europe that he recounted in his novel La tregua <\/em>(directly translated to The Truce<\/em> and titled The Reawakening<\/em> in the US), Primo Levi landed in Turin and reconnected with his family, who had been spared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A need to testify <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And not without difficulty, life resumed. Primo Levi found a job as a chemist and became manager of a paint company. He married, had two children and many friends. He spoke, constantly sharing what he had witnessed, on behalf of all those who could no longer speak and who had been alone at the end of the horror. He wrote frantically, recounting his experience in the camp, because \u201cthe need to tell our story to ‘the rest’, to make ‘the rest’ participate in it, had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of competing with our other elementary needs.\u201d However, in the post-war political and literary climate, the major publishers shied away. Se questo \u00e9 un uomo<\/em> was published only in 1947 by a small publisher, De Silva, in 2,000 copies. La tregua<\/em>, published in April 1963, was immediately more successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His work and family life left him little time for writing. Nevertheless, little by little, his work began to be recognised, translated and brought to the stage. Primo Levi continued and expanded it. He successively published Il sistema periodico <\/em>\u2014The Periodic Table<\/em>\u2014 (1975), a portrait of his ancestors and the Jewish community in Piedmont; La chiave a stella <\/em>\u2014The Wrench<\/em>\u2014 (1978), a\u00a0 face-to-face between a metalworker and a chemist; Lilith<\/em> (1978), a tribute to his benefactor Lorenzo Perrone; and Se non ora, quando? <\/em>\u2014If Not Now, When?<\/em>\u2014 (1982), the horrific story of a group of Jewish partisans in occupied Poland. In I sommersi e i salvati <\/em>\u2014The Drowned and the Saved<\/em>, \u2014 Primo Levi takes up the essential themes of his analysis of the extermination camps. This extensive list goes on, works ranging from fiction to poetry, all of which have been translated into English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once retired, Primo Levi had satisfied \u2013 in part \u2013 his passion for study. His appetite for culture was insatiable and always on the alert. It ranged from literature \u2013 in four or five different languages \u2013 to science, modern and ancient history, Jewish culture and philology. His fame imposed a multitude of obligations on him, sometimes so pertinent that he wasn\u2019t able to prioritize these obligations based on personal interest. This proved his warning true: \u201cWhether we like it or not, we are witnesses and we bear the weight of that witness\u201d (Letter in French to Jean Samuel, April 1946). Primo Levi carried this burden to the end, never ceasing to recall \u201cwhat was\u201d, treating questions about causes and responsibilities with the rigor of a chemist. Up until the end, he fought against the resurgence of fascism and negationism all while coping with his family and editorial obligations, medical procedures, and illness.\u00a0 His commitment to the dispersion of his testimony continued until his last days. On the eve of his death (April 10, 1987 in Turin) he discussed publishing his influential book The Drowned and The Saved <\/em>in France and wrote a final article for Italian journal La Stampa. Among some of his last words were these spoken to a friend: \u201cDo you think I\u2019m depressed? I don\u2019t think so. I survived, I told the story, I bore witness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Founding Associations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Primo Levi Centre was founded by a number of associations working in the field of health and the defence of human rights: the French Section of Amnesty International, M\u00e9decins du Monde, Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT-France), Juristes sans Fronti\u00e8res, and Tr\u00eave, an association of professionals working in the field of care for survivors of torture and political violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faced with the complex and precarious nature of the effects of torture, five nonprofit organizations working in the field of health and the defence of human rights created the Primo Levi Centre in 1995 dedicated to the treatment of torture survivors. The center was created at a time of a pressing international political context: the … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1538,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"69066","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-68424","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOur History - Centre Primo Levi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/primolevi.org\/en\/our-history\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our History - Centre Primo Levi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Faced with the complex and precarious nature of the effects of torture, five nonprofit organizations working in the field of health and the defence of human rights created the Primo Levi Centre in 1995 dedicated to the treatment of torture survivors. 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