6 JANUARY 1990, Page 22

Over-optimistic

Sir: Anthony Blond, in his review of Livia Svevo's memoir of her husband (23/30 December), asserts with some optimism that 'the Italians successfully avoided deliv- ery of their Jews to the Nazis'. This is untrue not only of Primo Levi, the Turin scientist captured by the Milizia in 1944 and deported to Auschwitz, but of a number of his compatriots who appear in the pages of his books Se Questo e un Uomo and La Tregua (Turin, 1963).

Brigid Allen

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