The Path and the Pit: History and Traumatic Memory in Primo Levi’s If Not Now, When?

Abstract

Primo Levi’s If Not Now, When? is a work of historical fiction describing the small triumphs and sufferings of a band of Jewish partisans who fight against the Nazis. They are also Holocaust survivors whose families and communities died in the pits of the Einsatzgruppen . This article reinterprets the novel through the combined lens of trauma theory and historian Saul Friedlander’s notion that, in the case of collective catastrophe, genuine historical consciousness may be achieved only through the uneasy juxtaposition of objective historical narrative with the victims’ anguished voices. While most other readings of the novel focus on the path Levi’s partisans take toward renewed dignity and reconciliation, the principal claim of this article is that the novel succeeds as a work of Holocaust historical fiction because it subverts it own narrative flow—its path—by constantly invoking the pit , the site of trauma that threatens to block the partisans’ access to the future. In support of this claim, the article not only analyzes the literary strategies Levi uses to engage his fictional characters in the documented history of World War II, but also uncovers his techniques for representing their memories of the Holocaust, a collective trauma that violently interrupted history’s course.