Citation

Braese S. Psyche (E Klett) 2003; 57(9-10): 960-981.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Ernst Klett Verlag)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article indicates the extent to which the literary testimony Primo Levi has given of the Nazi extermination camps can be read as an expression of the desire to communicate traumatic experience. Dependent on addressees able and willing to face up to the testimony of a survivor, the first German publication of If This is a Man (1961) was a specific challenge for Levi, an experience he gives a precise account of in the last work written before his suicide in 1987. The deficits displayed by German readers in the ability to square up to this survivor's testimony stand revealed as an essential condition of post-war culture, not only in Germany.

Language: de