Abstract

La tregua describes Primo Levi's return from Auschwitz through eastern Europe to Torino. Levi's narrative elaborates a Judaism that is transgressive of community, social expectation, and above all of the notions of purity and unity propagated in the Leggi razziali of 1938 which denied him his identity as an Italian, and led, via the Carta di Verona of 1943, to Auschwitz. Levi's authenticity lies in his becoming a Jew as non-Jew. Dottor Levi accordingly serves an apprenticeship in survival skills under small-time thieves, charlatans, and whores. His new identity will be differential and impure, an identity à venir. Levi elaborates a justice that erupts through both law and proscription.

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