انسان نسبت به انسان‌های دیگر یا همچون خدایان است یا همچون گرگ. ارسموس

خودکشی پریمو لوی -نماد مقاومت و استقامت انسانی- در اواخر دهه هشتاد به‌قدری دور از انتظار بود که باعث سرخوردگی و یاس گسترده ای در دنیا شد. در آن زمان ویلیام استایرن نویسنده کتاب ظلمت آشکار: خاطرات دیوانگی با چاپ مقالاتی در تایمز، لوی را جز آن‌دسته از افرادی قرار داد که زیر رنج عظیم افسردگی سرانجام کمر به نابودی خویش بستند و به دفاع از او و اقدامش پرداخت. من اولین بار نام پریمو لوی را در همین کتاب استایرن دیدم. مدت‌ها از خواندن این کتاب گذشته بود که در جستجوی کتابی با موضوع هولوکاست، از روی اتفاق نام لوی را دیدم و حدسم درست از آب درآمد، خودش بود! بی درنگ شروع به خواندن کتاب کردم تا زندگی مردی را مرور کنم که از سخت ترین شکنجه های آشویتس جان سالم به‌در برد تا در نهایت خود را از ساختمانی به پایین پرتاب کند

کتاب یک اتوبیوگرافی ست که به شرح خاطرات نویسنده در اردوگاه مرگ آشویتس می پردازد، اما این سطحی ترین حقیقتی ست که می شود از کتاب بدست آورد. می توان کتاب را خواند و فهمید که در جامعه ای که قانون جنگل حکم‌فرماست، چگونه انسان‌ها از انسانیت فاصله می گیرد، چگونه می توان سیستمی طراحی کرد که تمام نشانه های آدمیت را از بنی بشر برباید، حتی از سازندگانش. مبنای حقیقی و تاری��ی مطالب ذکر شده، تلخی خواندن این رنج‌نامه را دوچندان می کند
کتاب‌هایی که خاطرات اردوگاه‌های مرگ و قربانیان هولوکاست را روایت می کنند با انگیزه‌ی دو چندان می خوانم تا هم یاد قربانیان را با خواندن مصائب زندگی‌شان گرامی دارم و هم فراموش نکنم که چگونه سکوت یک جامعه در قبال بی عدالتی، همراهی با ظالم و عین ظلم است

فراموش نکنید آنچه را که بر ما گذشت
هرگز فراموش نکنید
این کلمات را بر قلب‌تان حک کنید
و به آن فکر کنید
در خانه و خیابان
در خواب و بیداری
و آن را برای فرزندهایتان تکرار کنید
و اگر نکنید
و اگر نکنید
خانه‌تان ویران باد

پریمو لوی

Vós que viveis tranquilos
Nas vossas casas aquecidas,
Vós que encontrais regressando à noite
Comida quente e rostos amigos:
Considerai se isto é um homem
Quem trabalha na lama
Quem não conhece a paz
Quem luta por meio pão
Quem morre por um sim ou por um não.
Considerai se isto é uma mulher,
Sem cabelos e sem nome
Sem mais força para recordar
Vazios os olhos e frio o regaço
Como uma rã no Inverno
Meditai que isto aconteceu:
Recomendo-vos estas palavras.
Esculpi-as no vosso coração
Estando em casa andando pela rua,
Ao deitar-vos e ao levantar-vos
Repeti-as aos vossos filhos.
Ou então que desmorone a vossa casa,
Que a doença vos entreve,
Que os vossos filhos vos virem a cara.

Primo Levi nasceu em Turim em 1919. Licenciado em Química, na Universidade de Turim, fez parte do Movimento Justiça e Liberdade. Foi preso pela milícia fascista, por ser judeu foi enviado para o campo de Fossoli, e posteriormente deportado para Auschwitz-Birkenau. As suas experiências no campo da morte estão documentadas neste livro e no A Trégua

Se isto é um Homem não é um romance, uma peça jornalística ou um documentário, é uma n  Memórian escrita por Levi, judeu italiano, que esteve preso no mais “famoso” campo de extermínio Nazi.

O prisioneiro 174.517 relata-nos o período que vai de 1944 até à queda do Terceiro Reich em 1945.
Considerava-se um “sortudo” por ter ido para Auschwitz apenas depois do governo alemão ter decidido manter os prisioneiros vivos durante mais tempo.

“Foi uma sorte para mim ter sido deportado para Auschwitz só em 1944, isto é, depois do governo alemão, devido à crescente escassez de mão-de-obra, ter decidido prolongar a vida dos prisioneiros a eliminar(…)”

Levi não escreveu este livro com o objectivo de enumerar as atrocidades ali cometidas, mas sim para oferecer um ponto de vista diferente que mostra que o "inimigo" não é uma espécie estranha, desconhecida, diferente, capaz de actos extraordinários de maldade, mas que o "inimigo" são os homens/mulheres comuns, que, devido a um conjunto particular de circunstâncias, são capazes de atrocidades sem fim. É um testemunho da crueldade inimaginável e da destruição dos Homens. É um livro frio, seco e sem emoções, um relato sem juízos de valor, brutal, mas honesto sobre a natureza da alma humana.

“As personagens destas páginas não são homens. A sua humanidade está sepultada, debaixo da ofensa que sofreram ou que infligiram a outrem. (...) Um homem é o que mantém pura a sua humanidade.”

Primo Levi e um pequeno grupo de prisioneiros foram libertados no fim da guerra. Levi tornou-se gestor numa fábrica de produtos químicos, em Turim, e reformou-se em 1977 para dedicar mais tempo à escrita.
Suicidou-se em 1987.

Se isto é um Homem é um livro pequeno, mas doloroso, profundamente doloroso.


MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

Este ciudat să afli despre un mare prozator abia la 20 de ani după moartea lui. Nu este în regulă. Am aflat despre Primo Levi dintr-un eseu-interviu scris de Philip Roth în 1987, anul morții scriitorului italian.

Primo Levi a stat la Auschwitz un an (ianuarie 1944 - ianuarie 1945). După ce a ieșit din lagăr, a dus viața unui om simplu. S-a căsătorit. A avut doi copii, un băiat și o fată. Era pasionat de chimie. A lucrat pînă la pensie într-o fabrică de vopsele. Nu s-a dedicat întru totul scrisului (n-a avut încredere în talentul lui?), și-a redactat cărțile în puținul timp liber care-i rămînea. Este limpede că tot ceea ce a trăit la Auschwitz l-a marcat adînc. Nici nu se putea altfel. În 1987, s-a sinucis. Un gest greu de priceput. Timpul trecut nu estompase, probabil, amintirea grozăviilor prin care a trecut. Nimeni nu cred că e în stare să ofere o explicație validă.

În Mai este oare acesta un om?, Levi prezintă captivitatea la Auschwitz în propoziții sobre și precise, lipsite de orice patetism. Folosește tonul unui om de știință. Consemnează întîmplări, fapte, gesturi. Nu judecă. Privește de sus. Cel mai unit a fost grupul evreilor din Salonic. Și cel mai afacerist. În lagăr, se fura tot (haine, nasturi, încălțări etc.), se vindea tot. Deținuții sufereau cumplit de foame. Pentru o bucată de pîine uscată, unii își vindeau bucăți din cămașă și îndurau frigul. N-au scăpat din lagăr cei mai nobili și nici cei mai pioși. (Primo Levi n-a fost credincios). Nici vorbă. Au scăpat cei care au avut șansă: și buni, și răi. Asta i-a mărturisit mai tîrziu și lui Philip Roth: „Nu m-a salvat Dumnezeu. Am avut un mare noroc”. După eliberare, a fost prizonier la ruși. Cînd a călătorit către casă, a trecut și prin România...

Paginile cele mai luminoase sînt acelea în care recită (și traduce) unui coleg de suferință francez cîntul despre Ulysse din Divina commedia (Inferno, 26).

Voi transcrie un singur pasaj:

„În lagăr se pierde obișnuința de a spera, chiar și încrederea în propria rațiune. În lagăr e inutil să gîndești, întrucît evenimentele se desfășoară în mod imprevizibil; și e dăunător, pentru că întreține sensibilitatea, sursă de durere...” (p.226).

Really incredible piece of writing whose non-American title, If This Is A Man, gets the point of the work across much better. This is no retroactively heroic how-to guide, but instead a bewildered, surreal look at the draining horror of the mundane in Auschwitz. Levi's lack of sentimentality is remarkable, and the book mixes compulsive page-turning with sharp analysis of the human condition. It is, of course, brutal, but its insights and moments of practical beauty make it a must read. The last chapter, in particular, as the contagious patients who've been left behind after evacuation band together and try to survive, will stay with you. Maus had long been my gold-standard in this horrible genre, but Levi surpasses it.

Only Sebald wrote " better" about the Holocaust.

"Considerai se isto é um homem
Quem trabalha na lama
Quem não conhece a paz
Quem luta por meio pão
Quem morre por um sim ou por um não."

5⭐️
Io credo che questo libro parli da solo.

La testimonianza di Primo Levi si distingue per la sua sobrietà. L'autore è una vittima che non grida, saremmo noi lettori a gridare. L'orrore diventa realtà senza spiegazioni, i protagonisti iniziano a vedere sinistri segnali di avvertimento, ma saranno sempre al buio, vivendo questi momenti come in un universo parallelo, senza sapere mai quando finirà e come uscirne vivi, ecco qui il concetto introdotto da Levi: I sommersi e i salvati, uscirne vivi di questo terrore veramente è stato essere salvati? magari solo la morte era la salvezza, sopravvivere a questo inferno è stato rimanere sommerso nella paura di non poter ridiventare uomini o donne.

Primo Levi però, dopo anni di rimanere assillato, prova a svegliarsi e scrive questo libro, è una testimonianza che non perde la fiducia nella ragione.

Il poema di Levi che introduce il libro la dice tutta, siamo noi che dobbiamo mantenere viva la memoria:

"Voi che vivete sicuri
Nelle vostre tiepide case,
Voi che trovate tornando a sera
Il cibo caldo e visi amici:
Considerate se questo è un uomo
Che lavora nel fango
Che non conosce pace
Che lotta per mezzo pane
Che muore per un sí o per un no.
Considerate se questa è una donna,
Senza capelli e senza nome
Senza piú forza di ricordare
Vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo
Come una rana d’inverno.
Meditate che questo è stato:
Vi comando queste parole.
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
Stando in casa andando per via,
Coricandovi alzandovi;
Ripetetele ai vostri figli.
O vi si sfaccia la casa,
La malattia vi impedisca,
I vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

Δεν θεωρώ πως το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο σηκώνει κριτική. Πως θα μπορούσε άλλωστε κάποιος να κατακρίνει τα προσωπικά βιώματα ενός ανθρώπου που κατάφερε να επιβιώσει μέσα στην “ναζιστική κόλαση”, μια κόλαση μέσα στην οποία εκατομμύρια άνθρωποι βρήκαν τον τραγικό τους θάνατο;

Ωστόσο, θα ήθελα να επισημάνω το γεγονός ότι ο Primo Levi κατάφερε να διατηρήσει μια αντικειμενική και αμερόληπτη στάση στο βιβλίο του, κάτι που ελάχιστοι άνθρωποι θα μπορούσαν να καταφέρουν εάν είχαν βρεθεί σε παρόμοια θέση. Ο ίδιος έδειξε σθένος και ψυχική αντοχή.

Το “Εάν αυτό είναι άνθρωπος” αποτελεί για εμένα ένα βιβλίο γεμάτο ηθικές αξίες.Το βιβλίο αυτό πρόβαλε τον τρόπο με τον οποίο ο άνθρωπος μπορεί να μετατραπεί από την πιο ευγενική ψυχή στον χειρότερο σαδιστή. Προβάλει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι Κάπο καταχράζονταν την δύναμη που τους δόθηκε και δεν σκέφτηκαν ούτε για μια στιγμή να βοηθήσουν τον συνάνθρωπο τους- τους ομοίους τους-, αντίθετα τους συμπεριφέρονταν χειρότερα και από τους ιδίους τους Ες Ες.

Με λίγα λογία καταφέρνει να παρουσιάσει όλα τα είδη ανθρώπων που μπορεί να υπάρξουν στον κόσμο, γιατί και το Άουσβιτς-Μπίρκεναου ήταν ένας κόσμος- εντελώς διαφορετικός από αυτόν που γνωρίζουμε αλλά εξίσου πραγματικός.

137th book of 2020.

In the wake of books like this, anything I say is rather useless. I don’t believe in “essential” books – I never seriously implore that someone must read any certain books (other than wanting friends to read my favourite novels). Primo Levi is possibly the one writer who I would say to the world, This is essential reading.

This book was published here in England as If This is a Man; my parents returned recently from Tavistock with a Folio of this book as a gift. I own the book already but being gifted the Folio only urged me to read it sooner. When I first read Levi several years ago (Moments of Reprieve) I told my lecturer that I was sad he was gone, sadder still that he had committed suicide after so many years of writing about what had happened to him, after spreading such knowledge and humanity… Though, perhaps, that is what drove him to do what he did. My lecturer, the same lecturer I have mentioned in countless reviews, D., replied that he fancied the world was a better place with Primo Levi on it.

One cannot read any of Levi’s books, I don’t think, without being shocked two things. Firstly, his utter honesty – not just his honesty about the events, but the honesty about himself. He calls himself clumsy and weak. He, above all else, gives no time to blaming the Germans, hating them, or even wanting to claim revenge. My Folio edition ends with an Afterword, a Q&A with Levi himself, in which someone asked why he didn’t hate the Germans or seem to want revenge. Despite the long answer, this line alone distils the tone of Levi’s answer and also a hint to his character:

n  My personal temperament is not inclined to hatred. I regard it as bestial, crude, and prefer on the contrary that my actions and thoughts, as far as possible, should be the product of reason; therefore I have never cultivated within myself hatred as a desire for revenge, or as a desire to inflict suffering on my real or presumed enemy, or as a private vendetta. Even less do I accept hatred as directed collectively as an ethnic group, for example, all the Germans; if I accepted it, I would feel that i was following the precepts of Nazism, which was founded precisely on national and racial hatred.n

You see, his humility is astounding. In an answer to another question he says, Only in this case am I, a non-Christian, prepared to follow the Jewish and Christian precept of forgiving my enemy, because an enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.

But enough about the Afterword. This was Levi’s first book, which focuses on his time in Auschwitz, as many of his other books do. It is perhaps slightly more descriptive than his other works that I have read; the previously mentioned Moments of Reprieve focuses on both characters and incidents, but focuses less on imparting knowledge and understanding to the camps and how they operated. It is a difficult read, as one can imagine; I found I could only read it when I was alone, when I was feeling thoughtful and reflective; it is not a book to be read in snatches on a busy train, or at the dinner table. Levi requires attention. And how can one be sat with friends and family laughing around them as they read before them, I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself. Levi proclaims, Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence. - and who are we to deny that claim from a man who has endured what he has endured?

In 2013, or perhaps 2014, I visited Auschwitz myself. I cannot think what time of year it was, but there was snow on the ground, or else trodden snow, ice. The space alarmed me, the sweeping land that the camp sat on; the expanse of white earth made the place more desolate, more empty. Some of it has faded from my memory, but like novels one has read in the past, though the events themselves have faded, the impressions have not. People wandered about in silence. The only true memory that stands in my mind’s eye, clear as day, was the tank, the size of an aquarium tank in my memory, filled with shoes. We were warned by the tour guide before entering that this was disturbing, that it was difficult to witness, and indeed, several girls excused themselves from the room. I hadn’t read any Primo Levi back then, I was only sixteen years old. I do not know if I will ever return to it, or if it will be left like that, a half-formed and hazy memory, that stings ever so slightly, when recalled. If I can say it stings to recall, I cannot fathom the power and the numbness that it stirred in others. In the Afterword Levi says that he returned twice to the camp.

I have no more to say; I feel fickle when attempting to. Any comment I make is hardly a mark on the immeasurable weight that the history here has. It is best then to leave Levi’s work as lumps in our throats, stones in the deceiving smoothness of our world. And a reminder too, that there are still concentration camps on our planet today.

It's hard to say anything about this magnificent book that hasn't been said many times before, so I won't even try but just write a note on why I have an abiding sadness when I think of the author.

Primo Levi lived all his life in the house of his birth in Turin, Italy apart from when he was in the concentration camp. Luckily he lived, just, through that awful, murderous year, and to all intents and purposes resumed the life of a chemist and author that the Nazis interrupted. He wrote The Periodic Table , lauded as the best science book ever written. Later he died from a fall down a narrow stairwell. It has been argued this wasn't suicide, but who climbs over banisters and falls down narrow stairwells except on purpose. As Elie Wiesel said, "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later". Alav HaShalom. Rest in Peace dear soul.

Finished July 21, 2014.
Reviewed Dec. 21, 2014.

n  "Here there is no why."n

Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who came to live in very troubled times. Born and raised in Turin, he was subjected to the fascist racial laws which discriminated against Jews and made finding employment very difficult; after the German occupation of Italy began, he joined the resistance movement but was quickly caught and transferred to an internment camp. When the camp itself came under German control, the authorities started arranging mass deportations of captured Jews to labor and death camps in the occupied east. Travelling in a cattle truck through cold and misery, Levi arrived at Auschwitz in February 1944. He was 25 years old, and would be one of the twenty Jews who remained alive from his transport of 650 people when the Red Army liberates the camp in January 1945.

Survival in Auschwitz is the record of Levi's time at the camp, in his own words. It's worth noting that this is the title specifically picked for the American release; I much prefer the original Italian and English translation n  If This Is a Mann, which conveys the tone and theme of the book much, much better. Survival in Auschwitz sounds almost like a...survival manual, a set of precepts that one should follow if one finds him or herself at such a place. If This Is a Man is taken from a poem by Levi which opens the book, and in which he asks his readers - sitting contendly in their warm, safe heated houses, to remember and think about what happened, never forget about it and pass this knowledge on to future generations:

Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud,
Who does not know peace,
Who fights for a scrap of bread,
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman
Without hair and without name,
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.

Levi's memoir is a chronicle of life inside a concentration camp, a world within a world; news from the outside world perpetrate the barbed wire very rarely and only at the end of the book, in the form of sound of distant artillery, which signify the slowly advancing Russians. and the growing panic among camp officials. Despite growing increasingly more deformed, squalid and haggard and their numbers thinning with every day, the camp had a cleaer hierarchical structure which had to be followed; and where there was no official hierarchy, a non-official one was quickly invented. When we think about concentration camps, we mostly remember their last and most gruesome part -the gas chambers and the crematorium. As important as they are, they are just a part of a larger whole - we often forget that people not only died in these camps, but also lived.

Levi's memoir is a chronicle of life inside a concentration camp, which in his own word is equal to reaching the bottom, with no other condition possibly being more miserable, a total demolition of what makes a man: the removal of one's personal dignity and reducing people to a sequence of numbers, taking away all that they own, even their hair, being forced to exist in conditions which make existence impossible and reduced to purely biological beings, who struggle only to remain alive. Despite all this, incredibly, living is possible even in a place where it couldn't be, and because of the smallest things: even a non-windy day can make a world of difference for a prisoner and give him the impression of good fortune, because a windy and rainy day is so much worse than ordinary rain. Prisoners steal from each other, as is the custom, but also interact and barter with one another, and sometimes even form what in another world would be a friendship.

The experience of reading this book is very intense, as Levi does not make excuses for either himself or his fellow prisoners and their behavior; he is not sentimental and self-pitying, and hides nothing. The memoir was first published in 1947, just two years after Auschwitz was liberated; his memory is still very fresh, and the images and events of Auschwitz are ingrained in his mind like the number on his forearm. Because of this, If This is a Man Levi's testament of the Holocaust is very immediate, and reads as if the events described in it happened just yesterday - and with this immediacy is its power, resulting in one of the most powerful passages in all of literature.

Now everyone is busy scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon so as not to waste the last drops of the soup; a confused, metallic clatter, signifying the end of the day. Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen.

Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without eve'n thinking any more? Can Kuhn fail to realize that next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again? If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn's prayer.