The literature of hiding as a new category of holocaust-related literary production

Start - End 
2023 - 2026 (ongoing)
Research Focus 
Research Period 
Research Language 
Additional tags 
Cultural memory
Holocaust

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Abstract

This project will reorient the study of Italian Holocaust-related literary production by defining and investigating a new category of it, consisting of texts by Jewish authors that bear witness to the experience of living in hiding to escape deportation to Nazi concentration and extermination camps. It will centre the experience of concealment by analysing unexplored narratives and reinterpreting widely known texts, identifying and inventorying the characteristics of what can be called “the literature of hiding.” The project will examine the extent to which this rich but often overlooked body of texts can reshape how the period of discrimination and persecution in Italy between 1938 and 1945 is publicly remembered and expand the discourse around the Holocaust in the country as well as beyond its borders. It aligns itself with the commitment of the few remaining survivors from that era to ensuring that Italian society keeps the memory of discrimination, persecution, deportation, and mass murder alive and relevant, even—or especially—in the absence of direct witnesses.

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