A mural dedicated to Primo Levi, created by artist aleXsandro Palombo for Holocaust Remembrance Day, was vandalized only days after it appeared. Titled “Memory Is No Longer Enough”, the artwork is located on the wall of the Montello Barracks in Milan. It depicts Primo Levi and Anne Frank sitting on the ground in Auschwitz uniforms, gazing up at a sky filled with yellow stars – symbols of the six million victims of the Nazi genocide.
The face of Primo Levi was defaced – an act Palombo described as a direct attack on memory and the civil value of historical testimony.
“This defacement is not an isolated act. It is a sign of the fanaticism that corrodes freedom and goes unopposed while collective memory fades,” said the artist.
“Every time someone tries to erase the face of those who paid the price of intolerance and dehumanization, we have a civic duty to make it even more visible.”
The mural was painted on the same wall where, in 2025, Palombo’s previous portraits of Holocaust survivors Liliana Segre, Sami Modiano, and Edith Bruck were defaced with swastikas, erased Stars of David, and the graffiti “Israeli Nazis.”
In response to that earlier act of vandalism, Palombo cleaned the surface and created a new composition featuring Primo Levi, turning the previous damage into a public act of denunciation.
In 2025, the Rome Holocaust Museum added several of Palombo’s works to its permanent collection, including portraits of Holocaust witnesses. These are now displayed near the Portico of Octavia and form part of the museum’s public memory trail.
Through his artistic interventions, Palombo draws renewed public attention to the fragility of memory and the responsibility to preserve it. By using art to transform public spaces into places of collective awareness, he reaffirms the importance of testimony and the obligation not to look away.
