ROME (JTA) – The paint factory in Italy where the author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi worked has been reopened as a museum and cultural center for Holocaust memory and civic action.

Inauguration events took place this weekend for the Train of Memory House, located in the Siva factory in the northern town of Settimo Torinese, where Levi worked for nearly 30 years. The factory was closed down and abandoned two decades ago.

Levi, whose books include the Holocaust memoir “Survival in Auschwitz” and “The Periodic Table,” worked there as a chemist and manager from 1947 to 1975.

The new complex includes an exhibition prepared by the Holocaust memorial museum at Auschwitz and another exhibition on the plight of refugees. It will host concerts, lectures and other events. There is also an exhibit on Levi’s life, located in the office he used when he worked as the plant manager.

The center was created as an initiative of Settimo Torinese, the civic action organization Terra del Fuoco and the Train of Memory organization, which promotes Holocaust education. Over the past decade, the Train of Memory has brought 25,000 Italian high-school students on study trips to Auschwitz.

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Ruth Ellen Gruber is JTA’s senior European correspondent. Based in Rome, she travels and writes extensively on Jewish affairs in Italy, Central and Eastern Europe and other European countries. A former UPI reporter, she has also written for The New York Times and the Encyclopaedia Judaica. She is also the author of several books: Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe, Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to East-Central Europe and Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today.