The author, a friend of writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, examines the nature of his legacy and its relevance to other survivors. Preferring to consider his death in April 1987 an accident rather than suicide, she distinguishes between "memorising" and "remembering," asserting that for Holocaust victims there can only be the former. Part of their trauma is to alter or reinvent the past to give their memories some respite, and in the process to shift the burden of guilt on to others. The essential thing is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive so that the interests of justice may best be served.