Romanzo che non ha bisogno di commenti. Un ritorno a casa dopo l'esperienza del lager piuttosto complicato per l'aspetto logistico e la conseguente e graduale presa di coscienza di Primo Levi di se' stesso, sopravvissuto nel corpo e profondamente ferito nell'animo. Un aspetto che mi ha fatto riflettere è che aveva 25 anni e che dopo essere scampato alla morte, forse ingenuamente, ha pensato che fosse giusto essere assistito e aiutato da parte dei "liberatori". Ha dovuto invece affrontare una nuova prova. Ci racconta di personaggi sopravvissuti come lui, che vivono di espedienti per necessità e per risentirsi vivi, di paesi attraversati tra le macerie e la miseria degli abitanti, di altra fame e freddo che deve sopportare e sistemazioni precarie a cui adeguarsi. Una graduale riconquista del senso della libertà e della nostalgia che ad un certo punto lo tormenta, il desiderio di testimoniare con la propria esperienza ciò che è accaduto.

After finished Levi's first memoir, Survival in Auschwitz, I picked up a copy of his sequel, thinking I might just read through his major works. The Reawakening picks off exactly where the other book leaves off, as Levi sees the first Russians approach the camp on horseback and finds himself, surrounded by corpses, a bit hesitant to say anything. The book then follows Levi's long, winding, confused road home within the Soviet sphere. It's a very strange experience, with Levi living in a series of displaced person's camps along with people from numerous nationalities, speaking an assortment of languages. Communication is tricky as everyone strives to find a common language or method of communication. (And everyone is afraid to speak German). He has one conversation in Latin. These camps were ragged affairs, loosely run, generally neglected, with no real medical care and irregular food. Sometimes he was just wandering, without a camp, without any food or shelter. Midway through the book he gets on a train (while sick) with a crew of Italians and ends up not in Italy, but on the open plains in Belarus, where he would spend a summer.

All this wandering makes for a somewhat directionless memoir, as he captures that he has no idea where he's going next or when. But, what struck me is that this isn't a sad reflective book. It‘s essentially a series of stories, and they‘re entertaining, capturing this unstructured mixture, full of strikingly outlandish and memorable personalities. The sense he gives is of nostalgia. He will, for example, develop a lot of affection for the series of disorganized Russian crews in charge of these camps.

I'm giving it fives stars because, in way, it's just really out there. Such a mixture of stuff and all of it off the beaten path of normal or historical life. Thousands and thousands of people experienced these camps in different ways, ending far away from home and often without a home to go back to. And, while I've heard of it, I've read about these Holocaust survivors who end up in rather uninspiring displaced persons camps, and I picked up that sense of how disappointing of a liberation this was, I've never read about the experience itself in the camps.

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22. The Reawakening by Primo Levi
translation: 1965, from Italian by Stuart Woolf, with an afterword translated by Ruth Feldman in the 1980’s
published: 1963
format: 1995 edition paperback
acquired: February
read: Apr 20-28
time reading: 8 hr 2 min, 2.2 min/page
rating: 5
locations: Poland, Belarus, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Italy
about the author Jewish author from Turin, Italy, July 31, 1919 –April 11 ,1987

É um livro de transição. Ao horror absoluto do lager segue-se uma pausa, feita de deambulações por uma Europa devastada pela guerra mas onde já irrompem os actos de humanidade nos quais podemos reconhecer o germe, nunca morto, do que é justo, normal ou apenas natural neste espécie especial, feita para o que é relativo e entendível e não para a voragem do mal absoluto. No fim chega a casa, mas também a terrível confusão de quem viu o apocalipse e não sabe o que fazer com isso. Levi é um observador fora do comum, isento de sentimentalismo e um contador de histórias nato. Não podíamos pedir uma testemunha melhor.

This is going to sound slightly unhinged but this might just be the greatest road book ever (and would make an absolutely fantastic movie). Where Survival in Auschwitzdeals with intensity of human suffering and inhumanity focused down to a white hot point almost beyond language, this book deals with an aftermath that of course was anything but simple. The story of how Levi returned home to Italy afterwards, the book manages to capture both the preservation of his essential humaneness and the large scale dislocation of peoples that marked immediately post-war Europe. The most astounding set piece in a truly astounding book is the story of death camp refugees holed up in an unlikely ex-country estate somewhere in what is now Belarus setting up a sort of community theater. I waded through Survival in Auschwitz, was stung by it (and abhore the asshole previous reader who noted in his/her marginalia the development of a "natural market economy" among death camp inmates) but without this book that is only a partial document of Levi's experience.

“Avevamo sperato in un viaggio breve e sicuro, verso un campo attrezzato per accoglierci, verso un surrogato accettabile delle nostre case; e questa speranza faceva parte di una ben più grande speranza, quella in un mondo dritto e giusto, miracolosamente ristabilito sulle sue naturali fondamenta dopo una eternità di stravolgimenti, di errori e di stragi, dopo il tempo della nostra lunga pazienza. Era una speranza ingenua, come tutte quelle che riposano su tagli troppo netti fra il male e il bene, fra il passato e il futuro: ma noi ne vivevamo. [...] non si sogna per anni, per decenni, un mondo migliore, senza raffigurarselo perfetto”.

Si tratta, come è noto, del resoconto del lungo viaggio di ritorno dell’autore dopo la liberazione dal campo di concentramento da parte dei russi. Viaggio lungo, estenuante, insensato.
Quasi a voler dire che non si può uscire dall’orrore di Auschwitz e dalla devastazione della seconda guerra mondiale come se niente fosse. La rielaborazione del lutto sarà lunga, penosa, faticosa, e forse non si compirà mai del tutto.

Ci attenderemmo infatti da questo racconto speranza e fremiti di impazienza, ritrovato senso di libertà e gioia di vivere (e forse c’è anche questo), ma si tratta anche e soprattutto, a mio avviso, di uno scritto permeato da dolore, amarezza, profonda malinconia, disillusione, perché “non è dato all’uomo di godere gioie incontaminate”. Perché “guerra è sempre”, come sentenzia uno della lunga galleria di personaggi che incontreremo durante la lettura, così veri nelle loro peculiarità, nella loro disperata pazzia, che è come se li avessimo conosciuti davvero anche noi.

Un ritorno a casa, a una precaria pace, che riguarda tutti noi.

“Che cosa avremmo ritrovato a casa? Quanto di noi stessi era stato eroso, spento? Ritornavamo più ricchi o più poveri, più forti o più vuoti? Non lo sapevamo: ma sapevamo che sulle soglie delle nostre case, per il bene o per il male, ci attendeva una prova,e la anticipavamo con timore. Sentivamo fluirci per le vene, insieme col sangue estenuato, il veleno di Auschwitz: dove avremmo attinto la forza per riprendere a vivere, per abbattere le barriere, le siepi che crescono spontanee durante tutte le assenze, intorno a ogni casa deserta, ad ogni covile vuoto?”

A differenza di Se questo è un uomo, La tregua è un resoconto meno cupo, con momenti ironici e divertenti. Non è un caso: in questo libro Levi racconta il ritorno a casa dopo la liberazione dal campo di Auschwitz, racconta un momento di speranza, di gioia, dopo mesi di sofferenze e vessazioni inaudite. Pure l'esperienza della guerra e del campo di concentramento è sempre presente, un fantasma che aleggia inquietante e cupo che non è possibile cancellare o dimenticare. Così alla spinta a ricominciare a vivere, pur accompagnata da una fame bramosa, da un desiderio di saziarsi dopo due anni di privazioni, si alternano momenti di cupa disperazione aiutati anche dal fatto che il viaggio di Primo Levi non segue un percorso "lineare", ma si incaglia nelle maglie della burocrazia russa e non solo, con partenze, deviazioni, soste prolungate, disorganizzazione. Eppure di 600 che erano partiti, Levi è uno dei 3 che riesce a tornare a casa. Torna con un fardello da cui mai potrà liberarsi pur rifacendosi una vita, torna con l'angoscia del testimone, ma anche quella del sopravvissuto. Torna e racconta. Gli siamo debitori della sua testimonianza, della memoria che tramanda e che vorremmo fosse davvero di monito a tutti soprattutto ora.

Uplifting and sobering account of the author's journey after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian advance through Poland near the end of World War 2. For a number of months, rather than becoming the ward of focused relief efforts by Allied Forces and the Red Cross like camps further west, Levi and a diminishing handful of survivors from the complex of sites labeled "Auschwitz" faced continuing struggles as they mixed with an incredibly diverse population of refugees from the war. These included ex-soldiers from Greece and Italy and many other nations, political prisoners, common criminals, German civilian workers of the occupation (or escaping the regime). Between railroad trips with deprivation in food and clothing, there were long stays in refuge camps run by Russian soldiers, with never any clear account why Stalin was retaining these populations. The medical condition of the camp survivors like Levi was a handicap. But it turned out that Levi's skills at language got him some needed help, and his science knowledge from his chemist background allowed him favors in service as a medical assistant. Apprenticing himself to people who were good at criminal activity was also a key strategy. A particular funny scene has one such associate and Levi wandering around a bare landscape at night to find a village where they can barter some plates for a chicken using pantomime replete with clucking. Levi's powerful and poetic rendering of this limbo-like existence avoids the focus on the pathos of victimhood, nor does it indict the German people or our civilization in general. Levi's great accomplishment lies in simply bearing close witness to and historical record of both the tragic neglect and the courage of the subjects in his memoir and by plumbing his own inner resources that kept his humanity and hopes.

4,5 *

This book is the sequel to the author’s more famous work, Survival in Auschwitz. Actually, it’s a trilogy with his third book, Moments of Reprieve. (I’ve only read this one and The Periodic Table.)

The story begins when Levi is freed from Auschwitz (in Poland) by the Russian Army marching west toward Germany near the end of the war. He writes that the Russians did not greet them; they looked at them in shame – how could humans do this to other humans? Many of those freed were in the make-shift hospital at the camp and many were so sick and weak that they died shortly after liberation. And the war was still on to the west of them.



Google maps tells us that the trip from Auschwitz to Milan by modern roads would take about 13 hours. His trip by train took 10 months. But they are free, and he begins the trip with a spirit of adventure. Sometimes groups of former prisoners struck out on their own on foot, following rumors of hot soup. But mostly they lived in make-shift camps for weeks or months waiting for the next train to arrive.

Levi is an academic and we can tell that, perhaps because he is quiet and withdrawn, he loves hustlers and make-shift entrepreneurs like the Greek ex-prisoner who told him he was a fool for having no shoes – “get shoes --- doesn’t matter how!” Or another Italian Jew who set up an “Italian Command” by calling himself a colonel by sitting at a desk with a pencil and a rubber stamp. Another aspiring businessman becomes a pimp setting up local village women on the outskirts of their quarters. Levi tells us the most important thing he learned in Auschwitz was “not to be a nobody.” So, he passes himself off as, and sometimes works as, polyglot pharmacist. His academic training was as a chemist.

Among the released prisoners are French, Greeks and Italians; some are Jews like Levi, some are not. Some Italian non-Jews were hardened criminals who were sent from Italian prisons by Mussolini to work as laborers in German prison camps. Some of these guys are crazy – one constantly reenacts his trial whether anyone is listening or not; another can only speak in curses.

They start out wearing prison striped outfits, but most people along their way don’t know what that means. He learns not to tell people he’s a Jew and he learns not to ever speak German. The Italians, Jews and non-Jews, still felt in danger behind Soviet lines. After all, Mussolini had aligned with Hitler against Russia. There were rumors the Italians were going to be sent across Siberia to the to the Japanese front.

Another major theme of the story is “…the inscrutable Soviet bureaucracy, an obscure and gigantic power, not ill-intentioned towards us, but suspicious, negligent, stupid, contradictory and in effect as blind as the forces of nature.” That’s why the 13-hour trip took 10 months. We learn a lot about the “fantastically disordered transit camps.”

He has chance encounters and re-encounters with people who wander off on their own and reappear later in the trip. Their disorganized travels took them east toward Moscow; then north; then they backtracked south, then west across Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany before heading south to Italy. Amazingly, after 10 months they end up in Slovakia only 120 miles south of Auschwitz. (He gives us a map.)

I won’t go into details of events along the way other than to say at times they starved and lived in unheated shacks; at other times they were well-fed and well-housed and even put on theatre performances for the Russian soldiers who escorted them.

The volume includes an extensive afterword in which Levi answers the ten or so most common questions he got from audiences when he spoke about his books: Why don’t you feel a desire for revenge? Did the Germans know what was happening in the camps? Did people in the camps try to escape or revolt?



While the main story can only be man’s inhumanity to man; Levi focuses on what it took to become a survivor: his Reawakening.

photo of Auschwitz from dinosworldtravels.wordpress.com
photo of the author from yalebooksblog.co.uk

Opinião em breve.

Depsite the political and philosophical penumbra, I regard this account as a travel narrative. The baggage involved is ineffable. Despite Adorno, this works and it projects.

Dans ce second récit autobiographique, Primo Levi continue l’histoire de « Si c’est un homme » là où il l’avait laissée. « La trêve » commence précisément par la dernière scène du précédent livre ; la libération du camp par l’arrivé des Russes. Le livre nous raconte alors les pérégrinations de l’auteur à travers l’Europe de l’Est, jusqu’au retour tant espéré à sa terre natale ; l’Italie. Ce livre a ceci d’intéressant, c’est qu’il nous révèle le côté insoupçonné de la fin de la guerre : les anciens prisonniers, les rescapés, vont devoir patienter encore près d’une année avant de pouvoir rentrer chez eux. « Il était arrivé ce qu’un petit nombre de sages parmi nous avait prévu. La liberté, l’improbable, l’impossible liberté, si éloignée d’Auschwitz que nous ne la voyions qu’en rêve était arrivée : mais elle ne nous avait pas menés à la Terre Promise. […] De nouvelles épreuves nous attendaient, de nouvelles peines, de nouvelles faims, de nouveaux froids, de nouvelles peurs » p.39. Le récit prend ainsi la forme d’une véritable épopée à travers l’Europe de l’Est, alors sous commandement russe. Ce roman aide aussi à comprendre le contexte délicat et ambigu qui prend place entre la fin de la 2ième guerre mondiale et le début de la guerre froide.

« La Trêve » aborde également la question fondamentale qui hante et subsiste au cœur de chaque rescapé à l’heure de la libération : « Nous sentions dans nos veines, mêlé à notre sang exténué, le poison d’Auschwitz. Où allions-nous puiser la force de recommencer à vivre... ».

A recommander à tous ! Particulièrement à ceux qui sont restés sur leur faim après « Si c’est un homme ».