Mural Created for Holocaust Remembrance Day, Featuring Survivor Primo Levi, Vandalized in Milan

A mural depicting Holocaust survivor and Jewish Italian chemist Primo Levi that was created in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day last week was vandalized mere days after it was unveiled in Milan, Italy.

The artwork, created by contemporary artist AleXsandro Palombo, is entitled “Memory Is No Longer Enough” and sits on the wall of the Montello Barracks in Milan. It depicts Levi as well as Holocaust teenage diarist Anne Frank sitting on the ground in the uniforms worn by prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Both Levi and Frank look up toward a sky of yellow stars, which resemble the same stars that Nazis forced Jews to wear on their clothing during World War II so they could easily be identify as Jewish.

The mural also features a “sky of memory” that evokes the six million victims of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, and in the center, Palombo writes, “Memory Is No Longer Enough.” Levi’s face on the mural was vandalized.

Levi was deported to Auschwitz in February 1944, and almost a year later, on Jan. 27, 1945, he was among the prisoners liberated from Auschwitz. He wrote about his experiences in a book published in 1947, titled If This is a Man, and it was one of the first accounts of what took place in the Nazi death camp ever to be published by a Holocaust survivor, according to the World Jewish Congress.

Palombo’s artwork is located on the same wall where his portraits of Holocaust survivors Liliana Segre, Sami Modiano, and Edith Bruck were vandalized just last year with antisemitic graffiti.

Swastikas were drawn on the mural, Stars of David were erased from the artwork, and a large inscription reading “Israelis Nazis” covered the wall. Palombo took action by cleaning the surface, removing the anti-Jewish slur, and creating a new artwork featuring Levi.

Last year, the Shoah Museum of Rome acquired for its permanent art collection several artworks by aleXsandro Palombo dedicated to Holocaust survivors. They are now displayed in front of the Portico d’Ottavia.