«Se l’Asse avesse vinto». Memoria e antifascismo in Primo Levi tra passato, presente e ucronia

This essay investigates the nexus between memory and anti-fascism in Primo Levi’s non-fiction writings of the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning with the definition of fascism articulated in the 1975 essay Così fu Auschwitz, it reconstructs Levi’s evolving conceptualization of fascism as both a historical phenomenon and a recurring political possibility. The study argues that insights already embedded in Se questo è un uomo are reconfigured in light of the resurgence of neo-fascist movements during the 1960s. In his commemorative and journalistic writings of this period, Levi reasserts the constitutive link between the memory of crimes perpetrated by fascist forces during the Second World War and the ethical-political legacy of anti-fascism. This link is mediated through the allohistorical hypothesis of an Axis victory—the counterfactual spectre of a racial project of domination whose historical defeat does not neutralize its latent potential. The essay concludes with a reading of the short story Gold from The Periodic Table (1975), as a culminating moment in Levi’s reappropriation and reinterpretation of his partisan experience.