Since his first narratives, Primo Levi has shown to be attracted by the semantic field of the Greek word barbaros and its etimology.However, Levi considered Nazism a modern barbarism which he represented in ways that, it can be said, intertwine the reflections on totalitarianism and anti-Semitism, by authors, such as Arendt, Sartre, Todorov, Bauman. Levi experienced  the consequences of an anti-foreign system and, in fact, he insists on a pre-human origin of the drive for hostility.Contradicting, therefore, the positivistic view defended in some articles, most of foreigners in the Primolevian narrative move in a totalitarian space that forges the foreign-enemy binomial, but are internally driven by attitudes of interest and curiosity. The various scenes located in the Lager with prisoners speaking different languages show an essential aspect: the gestures of exchanges. These are disseminated throughout Primo Levi s literature and refer to the space inaugurated by the gesture of unconditional hospitality as defined by Derrida. The topic of exchange and sympathy (Paul Ricoeur), as a primary and simple reaction to other human beings, is still very relevant and current,while the perception of the enemy and the ethnic-religious divisions are configured above all as a political construction inside our civilization.