Harry Lubasz Memorial Lecture: Translating Primo Levi's If This is a Man, by Professor Stuart Woolf
Primo Levi’s 'If This is a Man' is the immensely powerful and moving memoir of his incarceration at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and 1945. First published in Italian in 1947, it was translated into English by Stuart Woolf in 1959. Professor Stuart Woolf, who held the first chair in Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Essex,discusses his experience of translating Levi’s text, and the impact that this has had on his own life and work as a leading historian of modern Europe. The lecture was given in memory of Heinz (Harry) Lubasz, a founding member of the Department of History at the University of Essex. Born in Vienna in 1928, Harry escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe to Britain on a Kindertransport; he went on to become a leading scholar of Marx, and eminent teacher of the history of the Holocaust. He died in 2012. This talk was part of Holocaust Memorial Week. To find out more go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/history/holocaust_memorial_week/default.htm