In the third chapter of The Drowned and the Saved , Primo Levi describes the shame of the survivor-the nameless pain felt before the silence and the void of Auschwitz-as an echo of the atavistic anguish inscribed in every one of the tohu-bohu , the empty and deserted universe. In this feeling there may lie the first signs of a reaction against blind matter: a form of consciousness of the existence of evil and an anticipation of hope for a better future. In this article, the author explores how, by means of a meditation on Auschwitz, by a reference to the Bible and to some fundamental concepts of Jewish ethics, Levi delineates an ethical horizon on which a text, a collective memory and a relationship with God, or with the silence of God, stand as fragile but visible signposts in an ethically uncertain future.