Kenosis, saturated phenomenology, and bearing witness

Auschwitz created Levi the 'writer-witness'. He writes"if I had not lived the Auschwitz experience, I probably would never have written anything". Such an overwhelming historical event can be understood as having positioned Levi as a writer, a vocation to which he had not previous aspired. This was his way of coping with the psychological and emotional aftereffects of his ordeal