Un seul témoin

"On 16 May 1348, the Jewish community of La Baume, a small Provençal village, was exterminated. The event was only a link in a long chain of violence which had started in southern France with the first eruption of the Black Death just one month before. The hostilities against the Jews, who were widely believed to have spread the plague by poisoning wells, fountains and rivers, had first crytalized in Toulon during Holy Week. The local ghetto had been assaulted; men, women, and children had been killed. In the following weeks similar violence had taken place in other Provençal towns like Riez, Digne, Manosque, and Forcalquier. In La Baume there were no survivors except one - a man who ten days before had left for Avignon, summoned by Queen Jeanne. He left a painful memory of the episode in a few lines inscribed on a Torah, now preserved at the Oesterreischische Nationalbibliotek in Vienna. In a very fine essay Joseph Shatzmillerhas succeeded, by combining a new reading of the lines inscribed in the Torah with a document extracted from a fiscal register, in identifying the survivor's name: Dayas Quinoni. [...]."

Carlo Ginzburg, "Just One Witness", dédié à Primo Levi, en Probing the limits of representation.