Primo Levi - Popular Culture References

Popular Culture References

• A quotation from Levi appears on the sleeve of popular Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers second album, Gold Against the Soul. The quote's origin is from Levi's poem "Song of Those Who Died In Vain". In an interview for the TV program Raw Soup in 1993, Manics guitarist Richey Edwards said that "Primo Levi was a beautiful person."
• "Primo on the Parapet" is a song by Peter Hammill dedicated to Primo Levi. The refrain says:

Here's a toast to Primo,

let's learn not to forget.

Here's a toast to Primo,

forgive but don't forget.

• David Blaine has Primo Levi's concentration camp number, 174517, from Auschwitz tattooed on his left forearm.
• In the Academy Award winning 2003 film by Denys Arcand, Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), the main character expresses outrage at the apparent apathy of the Roman Catholic Church during World War II toward the Holocaust: "Que votre Pie XII soit resté assis sur son cul dans son Vatican doré pendant qu'on amenait Primo Lévi à Auschwitz C'est abject, c'est immonde!!" which translates to: "Pius XII sitting on his ass in his gilded Vatican, while Primo Levi was taken to Auschwitz... It's despicable! Hideous!". In another scene the same character wishes that he had written The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Levi's The Periodic Table. Later in the same film, a French edition of If This Is A Man (Si c'est un homme) is prominently shown on the same character's bookshelf).
• Christopher Hitchens' book The Portable Atheist, a collection of extracts of atheist texts, is dedicated to the memory of Levi "who had the moral fortitude to refuse false consolation even while enduring the 'selection' process in Auschwitz". The dedication then quotes Levi in The Drowned and the Saved, asserting, "I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day."
• Inspired by Primo Levi, Primo Levi Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to studying the history and culture of Italian Jewry, opened its doors in NYC in 2003.