Non è facile né gradevole scandagliare questo abisso di malvagità, eppure io penso che lo si debba fare, perché ciò che è stato possibile perpetrare ieri potrà essere nuovamente tentato domani, potrà coinvolgere noi stessi o i nostri figli. Si prova la tentazione di torcere il viso e distogliere la mente: è una tentazione a cui ci si deve opporre. Infatti, l'esistenza delle Squadre aveva un significato, conteneva un messaggio: <>.

Me quedo muda. No hay palabras mías que le hagan justicia a algo tan grande.

n  This desire for simplification is justified, but the same does not always apply to simplification itself, which is a working hypothesis, useful as long as it is recognized as such and not mistaken for reality.

Here, as with other phenomena, we are dealing with a paradoxical analogy between victim and oppressor, and we are anxious to be clear: both are in the same trap, but it is the oppressor, and [they] alone, who has prepared it and activated it, and if [they] suffer[] from this, it is right that [they] should suffer; and it is iniquitous that the victim should suffer from it, as [they do] indeed suffer from it, even at a distance of decades.

Every victim is to be mourned, and every survivor is to be helped and pitied, but not all their acts should be set forth as examples.n

I've wasted a lot of time over the years pandering to people who were around for the entertainment rather than the maturation. For too long, I stagnated in the idea that I not only had to say what I believed, but also had to convince every single one of my audience to feel the same way, not on subjects of favorite food or most disliked pop star but whether or not certain sectors of the population should be afforded the same human treatment as the artificial norm. I've gotten past that for the most part, and coming to this work when I did simply confirmed my suspicion of those who decry Tumblr as a hive mind while simultaneously depending on others to build a better future, for the words Primo Levi penned in 1986 and most assuredly cogitated in a far earlier period can confirm everything I've argued for and lost friends over and eventually alienated the silent masses with. The work's not perfect, as in addition to the usual ableist mumbo jumbo there's the mystical way in which generally worded arguments somehow pass over various nationalizities and socioeconomic systems as many a European-birthed morality bulwark does, but Levi is not a saint, and the skeleton he built will always need the flesh that has been brought forth between now and the time he put forth his incalculably valuable philosophy. It is telling, however, that the most popular quote of this work is when he speaks of being a nonbeliever. Out of context as it is, I don't think the majority of them liking it knows what it means.

n  [I]t was not a matter of thrift but a precise intent to humiliate.

Privilege, by definition, defends and protects privilege.

The ascent of the privileged, not only in the Lager but in all human coexistence, is an anguishing but unfailing phenomenon: only in utopias is it absent. It is the duty of [the] righteous [] to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.

The institution represented an attempt to shift onto others—specifically, the victims—the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.n

Similar to Black Reconstruction in America, the quotes derived, as well as text itself, is worth far more than anything I have to say about it. Similarly as well to how BR lays out history as a testament to the nativity that proclaims time equals progress, The Drowned and the Saved identifies the kernels of calamity lying in the bosom of complacent types who expect the likes of Antifa and co. to stem the bloody tides and carry them in a polite and apolitical fashion towards a new and more ethical future. If everyone practiced as exactly a self-reflexive gaze as Levi puts down in these pages, there would be no need to go to war after the genocide had already begun. However, little by little, drop by drop, the slaughter of mentally ill people and poor people and trans people and occupied people paves the way towards the normalization of speech that calls for such violence against populations which turns into books, which turns into platforms, which turn into political victories, which turn into reality. All it takes is an old ingrained prejudice, lax public integrity, a socioeconomic and/or political opportunity (usually a crisis), and a can do attitude when it comes to the propaganda and the jargon and the us vs them reasoning that uses the excuse of natural selection as a means to a future, and suddenly no one is safe and everyone is complicit. You can't tell me hardworking and morally upright adults will prevent this from happening, as it's hardworking adults who dehumanize on a small scale and, when this is pointed out, mewl and puke and sea lion their way out, refusing to believe another's pain is more important than their pride. You can't tell me someone who fails on such a small level as this will do any better on the larger and more genocidal ones. Levi doesn't render his foreshadowing completely intersectional, but his bias does not irredeemably compromise his truth.

n  One must benefit in order to feel beneficent, and feeling beneficent is gratifying even for a corrupt satrap.

It is naive, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims: on the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself, and this all the more when they are available, blank, and lacking a political or moral armature.

I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.n

This is my first favorite and five star of 2018, which is a fucking shame because this book is terrifying. People want the world to survive Trump as US president, but they want it as a either a slow abolishment of hate without them lifting a finger, or a WWIII where the villains are concretely villains and there's character development to be had by the good guys. The world is filled with children with gavels and guards and guns, and I'm not talking about the mentally disabled adults who will be the first to be shot down if Hitler's trajectory is to be studied as a model. In the words of Ursula Hegi, one will adapt and adapt and adapt by saying this is too controversial, this is too violent, this is too hasty, this is too presumptive, this is too soon, this is not enough, this is my president, this is my boss, this is my friend, until there is nothing left, as if all of this hadn't happened before. At this stage, it will happen again. It is, for all intents and purposes, gift wrapped.

n  
I frequently noticed in some of my companions (sometimes even in myself) a curious phenomenon: the ambition of a "job well done" is so deeply rooted as to compel one "to do well" even enemy jobs, harmful to your people and your side, so that a conscious effort is necessary to do them "badly."

[T]hey realized that testimony was an act of war against fascism.

Obtaining a passport and entry visa is much easier than it was then, so why aren't we going? Why aren't we leaving our country? Why aren't we fleeing "before"?n

Meraviglioso nella sua semplicità, dovrebbe essere una lettura obbligatoria per tutti e tutte.

Chissà quanta forza c’è voluta. Chissà quanta sofferenza è costata la stesura di questo saggio a Primo Levi. È un’analisi feroce, acuta, lucida, obiettiva. È un bisturi che lavora con precisione terrificante. Lavora sugli aguzzini e sulle vittime. Lavora sulla “zona grigia” composta di oppressi fatti oppressori, lavora su chi sapeva e ha taciuto, su chi vedeva e s’è finto cieco. Lavora sul senso di colpa del “salvato” cui pesa come macigno la domanda “perché io e non un altro?”. Un’indagine che scava nel profondo del genere umano capace di “costruire una mole infinita di dolore”. Lettura drammatica, spessa, potente. Non si trovano le parole per dare una dimensione allo scritto di Levi. Quei “salvati” sono “sommersi scampati”. Per onorare i sommersi, per dare un senso al dolore dei salvati è nostro dovere ricordare, tramandare le loro testimonianze. È nostro dovere per loro, per noi e per chi sarà dopo di noi. Non possiamo e non dobbiamo dimenticare. Perché la vittoria del male avverrà il giorno in cui ciò che è stato sarà dimenticato.
 
“È avvenuto, quindi può accadere di nuovo: questo è il nocciolo di quanto abbiamo da dire”.

n  n    "Nós sobreviventes somos uma minoria anómala além de exígua: somos os que, por prevaricação ou habilidade ou sorte, não tocaram o fundo. Quem o fez, quem viu a Górgona, não regressou para contar, ou regressou mudo; mas são eles, os que sucumbiram, as testemunhas integrais, aqueles cujo depoimento teria um significado geral. São eles a regra e nós a excepção."n  n

Os que sucumbem e os que se salvam é o livro de Primo Levi que encerra a n  Trilogia de Auschwitzn, iniciada com n  Se Isto é um Homemn e é também a derradeira obra do autor, publicada um ano antes da sua morte. Não se trata tanto de um livro de cariz autobiográfico, mas de um conjunto de oito pequenos ensaios, nos quais a vivência pós-libertação e a pesquisa realizada em diversas fontes (documentais, testemunhos de terceiros, correspondência diversa), complementam as memórias próprias.

Fruto de uma maturação ao longo de quarenta anos, nos quais o autor nunca parou de procurar respostas que lhe permitissem compreender o incompreensível e explicar o inexplicável, este livro reflecte a preocupação relativamente à dificuldade de transmissão da memória do Holocausto e da sua perpetuação na consciência colectiva das gerações posteriores. Esta preocupação resulta, por um lado, do esforço relativamente bem sucedido do regime nazi em suprimir todas as provas relacionadas com a história dos campos de concentração e de extermínio e, por outro lado, da dificuldade de se poder acreditar numa monstruosidade de contornos tão inacreditáveis e, sobretudo, que esta possa alguma vez repetir-se. Como refere o autor no capítulo de Conclusão: “Para nós falar com os jovens é cada vez mais difícil. Sentimo-lo como um dever, e ao mesmo tempo como um risco: o risco de parecermos anacrónicos, e de não sermos ouvidos.”

Entre os temas abordados nos oito ensaios destaco:
“A memória da ofensa”, onde o autor reflecte sobre as justificações criadas para os actos cometidos e o nível de consciência dos agressores (activos ou cúmplices passivos) relativamente aos mesmos: “… há de facto quem minta conscientemente falsificando a frio a própria realidade, mas são mais numerosos os que levantam ferro e se afastam, momentaneamente ou para sempre, das recordações genuínas e fabricam uma realidade mais cómoda“ . Reflecte também sobre a exactidão das memórias das vítimas sujeitas a experiências limite que, frequentemente condicionadas pelo trauma ou pela vergonha, filtram os episódios mais extremos, substituindo-os por aquilo a que o autor chama “verdades consolatórias”.

“A zona cinzenta” é o capítulo que mais nos remete para a primeira obra da trilogia. Analisa o nacional-socialismo enquanto ordem que “degrada as suas vítimas e torna-as parecidas consigo própria, porque precisa de cumplicidades tanto grandes como pequenas” e debruça-se sobre o sistema concentracionário e o modo como, através da sua hierarquia e funcionamento, alimenta o colaboracionismo moral dos prisioneiros com os agressores e visa o objectivo máximo de desumanização das vítimas.

No capítulo “A vergonha” somos confrontados com os motivos susceptíveis de conduzir a um tal sentimento perante um pecado cometido por outrem: a vergonha do aviltamento e da degradação a uma condição de infra-humanidade, isenta de padrões morais, ou simplesmente a vergonha de se ter sobrevivido no lugar de outros mais valorosos que “morreram não apesar do seu valor, mas devido ao seu valor”. A vergonha à qual são atribuídos inúmeros suicídios de vítimas imediatamente após a libertação.

Nos restantes capítulos outros tópicos são objecto de análise:
- as barreiras linguísticas sentidas por grande parte dos prisioneiros nos campos e que, frequentemente, se revelaram fatais (“ a comunicação gera a informação e sem informação não se vive” );
- a violência inútil que inflige o sofrimento, não como meio ou efeito colateral na persecução de um objectivo, mas enquanto objectivo em si, ou seja, a “simples violência pela violência orientada apenas para a criação de dor”;
- a tendência de o conhecimento, a consciência e o agnosticismo restringirem a adaptação e a sobrevivência no Lager: “A lógica e a moral impediam de aceitar uma realidade ilógica e imoral.: daí resultava uma rejeição da realidade que em regra conduzia rapidamente o homem ao culto do desespero”;
- a visão estereotipada da situação de cativeiro por parte daqueles cujo contacto com experiências extremas se resume à ficção, porque na vida real “não podem existir coisas de que não é moralmente lícita a existência”;
- o feed-back, por parte de leitores alemães relativamente à obra Se Isto é um Homem”.

Ao longo de todo o livro, a escrita mantém o tom lúcido e sereno patente desde o primeiro título da trilogia. Salientam-se, contudo, alguns apontamentos mais críticos, dirigidos não tanto aos mentores do sistema e aos seus executores mais directos, mas sobretudo à enorme franja de cúmplices passivos que, por ignorância, comodismo, espírito gregário ou carreirismo, se deixaram iludir, aliciar e fanatizar por “um histrião cuja figura hoje provoca o riso”. Uma crítica que é simultaneamente um alerta para todos nós.

An unrelentingly grim series of eight essays about the concentration camp experience, recommended only for true pessimists and those who think that Primo Levi is one of the very greatest writers about the Holocaust, which I do.

One thing Primo Levi does for us is complicate things. He explains :

Without profound simplification the world around us would be an infinite, undefined tangle that would defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions. In short, we are compelled to reduce the knowable to a schema.

However, you don’t have to go far to discover that what has been presented to you in the official rhetoric as being straightforward is not so – the war isn’t winnable, the peace isn’t with honour, the enemy aren’t terrorists, they had no weapons of mass destruction, they don’t hate us because we love freedom. These are simplifying, comforting untruths.

In the first essay, “The Memory of the Offense”, he notes the optimistic self-generated rumours of the prisoners in the camps - the war will be over in two weeks, there will be no more selections, Polish partisans will liberate the camp soon – and sets them beside the similarly comforting lies of the surviving perpetrators – only following orders, we knew nothing about this, I was not a Nazi.

For Levi, the simple statement is usually self-deluding. This is true for the prisoners of the Nazis as well as the Nazis.

The network of human relationships inside the lagers (camps) was not simple – it could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and perpetrators.
…

The privileged prisoners were a minority within the Lager population, but they represent a potent majority among the survivors

And the “privileged” prisoners were ones who managed, by one means or another, to get better food rations than the others. Ordinary prisoners got 800 calories a day and died of malnutrition and disease.

This is a shocking thing – most of the survivors, he is saying, were, in some way, compromised.

Levi reminds us again that one of the central lessons of the Third Reich is the seemingly infinite compromisability of human beings. You can get them to do almost anything, just ask a sonderkommando.

“Жив съм и искам да ви разбера, за да ви съдя.”

Това е последната изповед на спасения преди да избере да потъне навеки и да се влее в редиците на безименните, от които не са останали дори и концлагерните им номера от “Аушвиц”.

Примо Леви прави последната си равносметка. Психотерапията на оцелелия и психоанализата на един химик се опитват да разберат: “Защо?”.

Защо изумително убийствено (в най-буквалния смисъл) ефективна и почти корпоративна организация като нацистките концлагери е видяла бял свят и просъществувала? Защо и палачи, и жертви, и околни наблюдатели са направили този чудовищен факт незаличимо възможен?

Примо Леви анализира. Противопоставя гледни точки, влизайки в главите и на жертви (каквато е той самият), и на палачи (които изучава отблизо с клинично професионално любопитство). Изобличава. Аргументира. Спори. Убеждава. Настоява. Търси. Отсява. Без нито за миг да забравя, че е човек, каквито са били и пазачите в лагера. Но за разлика от тях никога не дава съгласието и достойнството си.

”Случило се е, значи пак може да се случи.”

Един от последните оцелели очевидци на холокоста (в чието съществуване мнозина искрено се съмняват!) отправя последното си предупреждение към хората, преди силите му да се изчерпят. Прави последно усилие за дисекция на паметта си, без сляпо да се уповава на нея.

Примо Леви е химик. Аналитичният подход му иде отръки. Не е драматичен. Сякаш логиката зад привидно семплата таблица на Менделеев е заложена в матрицата на ума му. Примо Леви е и човек. От първо лице. Често лутащ се, питащ се, съмняващ се, съпричастен или не дотам. Винаги опитващ се да разбере и обясни уж необяснимото. И да ни предупреди - както може. За да не позволяваме да се случва повече.

П. П. Разкошен превод на Нева Минчева!

***

⛓ “...двамата (жертвата и насилникът) са в един и същи капан, но именно насилникът, и само той, го е заложил и захлопнал, а ако е пострадал от него, то така му се полага, и е несправедливо жертвата да страда...”

⛓ “Разумът, изкуството и поезията не помагат да се разгадае мястото, от което са прокудени.”

⛓ “Целите в живота са най-добрата защита срещу смъртта - и не само в концлагера.”

I have to say from the start, Primo Levi is one of the best writers about the Holocaust.

This series of essays follows his two memoirs about the experience at Auschwitz. I am always surprised to see how serene Primo Levi is in his writing. He is not enraged; he does not hate. He also does not forgive. He is still looking for answers, 40 years later after Auschwitz. Here he dwells on different aspects of the experience in an extermination camp but also on the life and character of the survivor. He speaks of the hope in the Lager, of the grey zone in which the survivors lived – because, as he sees is, only the privileged, corrupted ones survived, because, otherwise, without moral compromises, they would have also died –, of the shame to have survived when so many perished, of the useless violence they had to endure, violence that served no purpose, that was an end in itself. He also tries to answer a few questions he was constantly asked: Why did you not escape? Why did you not rebel? Why did you not avoid capture?

I have no energy to write more.

I had to pour me some hard alcohol to be able to transcribe the paragraphs below:

“Until September 1944 there were no children in Auschwitz, they were all killed by gas on arrival. After this date, there began to arrive entire families of Poles arrested at random during the Warsaw insurrection: all of them were tattooed, including the new-born babies.
The operation was not very painful and lasted no more than a minute, but it was traumatic. Its symbolic meaning was clear to everyone: this is an indelible mark, you will never leave here; this is the mark with which slaves are branded and cattle sent to the slaughter, and that is what you have become. You no longer have a name; this is your new name. The violence of the tattoo was gratuitous, an end in itself, pure offence. Were the three canvas numbers sewed to pants, jackets and winter coat not enough? No, they were not enough: something more was needed, a non-verbal message, so that the innocent would feel his sentence written on his flesh. It was also a return to barbarism, all the more perturbing for orthodox Jews: in fact, precisely in order to distinguish Hews from the barbarians, the tattoo is forbidden by Mosaic Law.”

“For an orthodox Nazi it must have been obvious, definitive, clear that all Jews must be killed: that was a dogma, a postulate. The children also, of course and especially pregnant women, so that no future enemies should be born. But why, during the furious round-ups in all the cities and villages of their boundless empire, violate the houses of the dying? Why go to the trouble of dragging them on to their trains, take them to die far away, after a senseless journey, die in Poland on the threshold of the gas chambers? In my convoy there were two dying ninety-year-old women, taken out of the Fossoli infirmary: one of the dies en route, nursed in vain by her daughters. Would it not have been simpler, more ‘economical’, to let them die, or perhaps kill them in their beds, instead of adding their agony to the collective agony of the transport? One is truly led to think that, in the Third Reich, the best choice, the choice imposed from above, was the one that entailed the greatest amount of affliction, the greatest amount of waste, of physical and moral suffering. The ‘enemy’ must not only die, but must die in torment.”

“The human ashes coming from the crematoria, tons daily, were easily recognised as such, because they often contained teeth and vertebrae. Nevertheless, they were employed for several purposes: as fill for swamp lands, as thermal insulation and especially notable, they were used instead of gravel to cover the paths of the SS village located near the camp. I couldn’t say whether out of pure callousness or because, due its origins, it was regarded as material to be trampled on.”

“[T]here were insurrections; they were prepared with intelligence and incredible courage by resolute, still physically able minorities. They cost a fearful price in terms of human lives and the collective sufferings inflicted in reprisal, but served and still serve to prove that it is false to say that the prisoners of the German Lagers never tried to rebel. In the intentions of the insurgents, they were to supposed to achieve another, more concrete result: bring the terrifying secret of the massacred to the attention of the free world. And indeed those few whose enterprise was successful, and who after many more depleting vicissitudes had access to the organs of information, did speak: but, as I mentioned in my introduction, they were almost never listened to or believed. Uncomfortable truths travel with difficulty.”
(emphasis mine)

Primo Levi committed suicide in 1987, a year after completing this book. Elie Wiesel said, at the time, “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later.”

"Se comprendere è impossibile, conoscere è necessario, perché ciò che è accaduto, può ritornare, le coscienze possono nuovamente essere sedotte e oscurate: anche le nostre."

Не знам какво да кажа за тази книга.
Дни преди да прочета "Потъналите и спасените" прочетох "Светът от вчера" от Стефан Цвайг, а ето че тъкмо днес е денят, в който почитаме жертвите на Холокоста. И двамата са жертви на това, оставило незаличими следи в историята, свирепо насилие над човека. Благодарение на популярността и финансовото си положение, Стефан Цвайг се спасява, намирайки убежище в Бразилия, но крехката му душа на пацифист не успява да преглътне обезкървения, от налудния режим на Хитлер, образ на Европа, и той слага край на живота си.
В годината, която е затворен в Аушвиц Примо Леви е очевидец на най-тежките издевателства над човека. Оцелява по чудо и малко късмет. През остатъка от живота си пише, разказва историите на тези, които не са оцелели - покъртителни, тежки, безмилостни истории на незаслужена и жестока смърт.
Чрез писането си Леви търси отговори, опитва се да разбере злото, съучастниците и свидетелите. Как се живее с тези демони, не мога да си представя, но се надявам в края на дните си Примо Леви да е бил по-малко угнетен и просто по невнимание да е залитнал от третия етаж, а не да е бил измъчван от травмите си, както много други оцелели преди него, и сам да е решил своя край.
Задължителна книга.

I confess that I'm not too keen on Primo Levi's writing style: it's way too dry for me. I have a baroque taste for adjectives, adverbs and verbal ornamentation that can't be satisfied by his matter-of-factness, his well-known lack of interest in any sort of literary virtuosity. This has always prevented me from truly appreciating his books, although obviously acknowledging the historical (moral) value of his work and personal experience as a survivor of the Holocaust - more precisely, in his case, the horrors of the Italian civil war, the deportation and the Auschwitz-Monowitz-Birkenau death factory.

However, this book differs from his previous work in that "The Drowned and the Saved" is not really a memorial: it's an essay, or rather a collection of considerations that sums up in a few short chapters the message and the meaning of his lifelong commitment as a writer as well as a witness. In fact it's the last book he wrote before committing suicide in 1987, so it's not preposterous to consider it kind of a final statement before he surrendered to his demons.

The opening paragraphs are to be seen as the author's declaration of intent: he warns the reader that memory is the most unreliable means we have for keeping truth and self-consciousness alive, and yet it's the only one at our disposal.
Any traumatic experience, even more so the unspeakable tragedy of a genocide, affects the human mind in unpredictable ways - both the victims and the perpetrators tend to alter the truth in their recollections, even though for different reasons: the former need some kind of psychological defense, whereas the latter are either deliberately lying or opportunistically turning the tables in order to feel less guilty. Thus reality and self-deceit get mixed together.
All throughout the book Levi does his best to discern between the two, and definitely seems to succeed.

His thoughts range from the sense of guilt so often described by the survivors (Why was I spared while so many others - worthier than me - were slaughtered like cattle?) to the difficulty of living in a 'normal' society after having been so degraded and abused; from the sheer madness of the Nazi plans to the cold, pragmatic logic of their methods (the schizophrenic inner nature of the regime); from the shame felt by victims in remembering the humiliation endured in the camps to the preposterous, sad, silly, sometimes even outrageous questions of those who 'weren't there' (Why didn't you escape? Why didn't you fight back? Why did you do this, why didn't you do that, why...?)
Besides his work as a chemist and then full-time writer, Levi was indeed very active as a speaker in schools and public meetings. This book includes plenty of remarks by students, children, intellectuals, Gentiles who are either unable to understand or too disingenuous to even make the effort. A whole chapter is dedicated to the letters he received from some German readers after the first deutschen Ausgabe of If This Is a Man was published: letters exuding unease, a strange sense of moral guilt but also the unconscious (sometimes deliberate) desire to keep the distance by either justifying or forgetting for good.

Although fallacious, memory can be a means to survive by at least preventing the perpetrators to rob their victims of their true identity. The author recalls his attempts to recite Dante's verses to a French fellow prisoner, the pleasures of accomplishing one's work in the best possible way, the redemptive power of one's intellectual/ideological/religious credo... any sort of individual as well as social background was a weapon against the total, irreversible annihilation of humanity that was being systematically implemented by the torturers at every level of the Lager daily life: from the godlike, often faceless Herr Kommandant to the brutes indulging their sadistic, psychotic, idiotic or simply apathetic tendencies.

Levi has often been criticised by other Jewish intellectuals for his reluctance to condemn 'the others' - those prisoners who got involved and collaborated with the SS in order to survive. Let aside the excesses of the worst individuals (kapos, informers, traitors who got willingly corrupted by the crumbs of power they were given) he neither justifies nor condemns anybody, not even the perpetrators - to a certain extent, that is.
What he strives for is some kind of understanding. He knows there was no meaning in Auschwitz: it wasn't a punishment, an ordeal planned and set up by a raging God, there was no redemption nor revelation. The murders and the obscene violence of the Lager were performed by men, human beings made of the same flesh and blood of the victims'. Discerning between 'us' and 'them' would be dangerous, since the responsibility would shift from an entirely human to some indefinite, unearthly level of existence. Both the perpetrators and the victims were human creatures; they abused, tortured, killed - or got abused, tortured, killed - for a lot of entirely human reasons: rage, boredom, lust, ambition, frustration, despair, psychopathy, stupidity, fear, dull gregariousness. Or maybe for no reason at all. But it happened on Earth and was the work of earthly creatures. This is what Primo Levi wants us to accept and remember.

A short but intense book that can't (and doesn't want to) be read as an essay on the Holocaust, but will certainly add much to anybody's knowledge of those unthinkable events.