16 October 1943 is one of the most intense, troubling
and spectacular works ever written on a single event in the Holocaust of
Europe's Jews. This text embodies a stylistic combination of almost real-time journalism,
powerful poetic and emotional literature and a profound philosophical essay on
the Nazi's behavioral patterns.
Giacomo Debenedetti, a distinguished Jewish-Italian author, journalist,
and literary critic and theorist describes in 16 October 1943 the terrors
of the raid of the Ghetto of Rome. The story (for it is first and foremost a
story) unfolds, with piercing, terrifying language, the deportation of one Jewish
community within the Nazi extermination mechanism.