| Sumario: | This article examines Erri De Luca's Il torto del soldato in parallel with recent debates in memory studies. Drawing on the work of James E. Young, Shoshana Felman, and Michael Rothberg, I discuss the intertwining of conceptions of memory and history, with a particular focus on silence and remembering in the context of the Shoah. I examine the positions in this debate, as represented by De Luca's three main characters, to argue that Il torto del soldato is structured around a tension between the commandment to remember, exhibited especially by the first narrator and his concern with memory writing, and historical narrative's tendency towards redemption. I further explore how anxieties about truth on the part of the second narrator's father interact with the daughter's refusal to bear witness to her father's narrated version of history to provide critical commentary on the ethical impossibility of straightforward representation of violent histories.
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