This is a eyes wide open analysis of many aspects of what Auschwitz and the other Nazi atrocities meant to writer and survivor Primo Levi. Beautifully written prose full of warmth despite the gruesome topic. Especially interesting were the chapters on Gray Areas (Kapos and other collaborators in the camps), Stereotypes, and the Letters From Germans he received after publishing the German translation of his first book Survivor of Auschwitz/If This Is A Man. Sadly, 34 years after its publication, the errors he warns about are being made again and the risk of a slip towards brutality and horror could truly reoccur.

There are some remarkable and terrifying insights brought here by Primo Levy:
The pressure that a modern totalitarian state can excercise over the individual is frightful. Its weapons are substantially three: direct propaganda or propaganda camouflaged as upbringing, instruction, and popular culture; the barrier erected against plurialism of information; and terror. Nevertheless, it is not permissible to admit that this pressure is irresistable, especially in the brief twelve-year term of the Third Reich. (p. 29). In year 3 of Trumpism, Fox is definitely used as armed propaganda and entertainment and is clearly a barrier to plurality of viewpoints and the terror of child-parent separation, the absence of the rule of law, the blatant corruption...all are rather eerie signs of an uncertain future.

When dump tried to compare sides between the white supremacists and the black populations they intended terrorise in Charlottesville (albeit with tiki lamps), it is a very close parallel to how the Nazis terrorized Jews (in fact, Goebbels and Hitler borrowed heavily from their vocabulary and techniques while finding them crude), Levy reminds us "I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer." (p. 48) The Jews were taken only because they were Jewish, not for any other reason whatsoever, just like people of color are vilified by the extreme right in the US.

In the excellent chapter, The Grey Zone, Levy dissects the problem of guilt for the victims calling it "National Socialism's most demonic crime" because in order to survive, the victims in Auschwitz were obliged to become amoral (stealing bread, resisting the urge to help others, and forced in the case of the Sonnerkommando to operate the machines of death). This 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. (p. 53) Primo asks us to make a thought experiment and imagine that we are someone who lived for months or years in a ghetto, tormented by chronic hunger, fatigue, promiscuity, and humiliation; that [we have] seen die around [us], one by one, [our] beloved; that [we are] cut off from the world, unable to receive or transmit news; that, finally, [we are] loaded onto a train, eighty or a hundred persons to a boxcar; that [we travel] into the unknown, blindly, for sleepless days and nights; and that [we are] at last flung inside the walls of an indecipherable inferno. (p. 59) It is truly hard to unflinchingly perform this thought experiment without damp eyes if one is perfectly honest with oneself. He closes this chapter with a moving and vivid passage: Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting. (p. 69)

In the next chapter about Shame, he talks about suicide and why it was rare in the Lager (the German word for Concentration Camps) on page 76:
(1) suicide is the act of man and not of animal and the prisoners were reduced to the state of feral, starving animals
(2) when one is dying, one is much to busy to think about death. All one's organism is devoted to is breathing (This is actually a quite from Italo Svevo's excellent The Confessions of Zeno that Levi uses.)
(3) there was no need to punish oneself by suicide because of a (true or presumed) guilt: one was already expiating it by one's daily suffering.
The sad coda to this section is that it is likely that Levy actually committed suicide in 1987, 41 years after coming home after all the suffering and less than a year after publishing this incredibly lucid analysis of his ordeal.

Besides this shame induced in the victims, he also calls out the vaster shame, the shame of the world...there are those who, faced by the crimes of others or their own, turn their backs so as not to see it and not to feel touched by it. (p. 85). This is precisely the same shame coming from racism that white supremacists repress when they try to proclaim that slavery was better than life back in Africa for african americans. And, for Levy, is a poor, invalid excuse for inaction or active participation in crimes.

In the chapter on Communication, he details how important language was in the camps and how the prisoners (and particularly the Jews) who were not even called "men" but rather "Häftlinge" or prisoners and how the rubber truncheon was called der Bolmetcher, the interpreter: the one who made himself understood to everybody. (p. 92)

Beyond the specific context of the Lager, he gives another example how the modification of communication operates at the state level:in countries and epochs in which communication is impeded, soon all other liberties wither; discussion dies by inanition, ignorance of the opinion of others becomes rampant, imposed opinions triumph. The well-known example of this is the crazed genetics preached in the USSR by Lysenko, which in the absence of discussion (his opponents were exiled in Siberia) compromised the harvests for twenty years. (p. 103). One does not need to think too hard to see how this still applies to the world we live in now where anyone who speaks up against the current US administration is vilified on Twitter and the red base just repeats empty MAGA(t) slogans while the environment is destroyed, Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid are slashed, and illogical trade wars decimate the heartland.

There are startling stories of resistence throughout, such as that of Mala (p. 156) who had resolved to die her own death and rather than being hanged cut her wrists with a razor and was trampled to death and died before being taken to the crematorium.

There is a chapter of exchanges between Primo and Germans after the translation of his book into their language that is quite relevatory.

In the Conclusion, there is a warning for us: It can happen, and it can happen everywhere. I do not intend to nor can I say it will happen; as I pointed out earlier, it is not very probable that all the factors that were unleashed by the Nazi madness will occur again simultaneously but precursory signes loom before us. Violence, "useful" or "useless," is there before our eyes: it snakes either through sporatic and private episodes, or government lawlessness, both in what we call the first and second worlds...In the Third World it is endemic and epidemic. It only awaits its new buffoon (there is no dearth of candidates) to organize it, legalize it, declare it necessary and mandatory, and so contaminate the world. (p. 199-200) Who could not read this and not feel a shiver down their spine at calling Mexicans "rapists," separating children from parents, erecting a useless wall (not as promised paid for by Mexico), etc. etc. The warning signs are all there. Sadly, in the 34 years since this book was written, we seem to have come full circle. As for the passive German population during this period, we would be wiser to heed the lessons of history:
The term torturers alludes to our ex-guardians, the SS, and is in my opinion inappropriate: it brings to mind twisted individuals, ill-born, sadists, afflicted by an original flaw. Instead, they were made of the same cloth as we, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly. They were, for the greatest part, diligent followers and functionaries, some fanatically convinced of Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient. All of them had been subjected to the terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators, and then completed by the "SS" drill, Many had joined this militia because of the prestige it conferred, because of its omnipotence, or even just to escape family problems. Some, very few in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers to the front lines, gave cautious help to prisoners or chose suicide. Let us be clear that to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it must be just as clear that behind their responsibility stands that great majority of Germans who accepted it in the beginning, out of moral laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride the "beautiful words" of Corporal Hitler, followed him as long as luck and lack of scruples favored him, were swept away by his ruin, afflicted by deaths, misery, and remorse, and rehabilitated a few years later as the result of an unprincipled political game. (p. 202-203)

Wake up, ghost. We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Again and again.

Fino's Reviews of Books about the Holocaust
Nonfiction:
If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levy
The Periodic Table by Primo Levy
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levy
The Night by Elie Wiesel
Auschwitz by Laurence Rees
Fiction:
The Tatooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris
Travel to Krakow to visit Auschwitz:
Krakow:City Guide [Blue Guides]

'È avvenuto, quindi può accadere di nuovo'

Ho letto diversi libri che hanno parlato della shoah, altri ne leggerò. Ho letto i pensieri di Anne Frank mentre conviveva con la paura di diventarne parte, ho seguito i topini di Maus nel gorgo della persecuzione crescente, e le giornate di lotta per la sopravvivenza di Levi ad Auschwitz. Ho letto la tragedia personale assoluta di Wiesel mentre perdeva tutto sè stesso un pezzo alla volta per non ritrovarsi più, e ho letto della banalità allucinante delle motivazioni di chi quella tragedia gestiva nel suo lavoro quotidiano raccontata dalla Arendt con il processo Eichmann. Tutte testimonianze uniche che parlano di paura, vessazioni, resistenza, disfatta e assurdità. Ma questo libro è diverso perché cerca risposte.

Dal sito Einaudi riporto le domande alla base delle riflessioni di Primo Levi: 'Quali sono le strutture gerarchiche di un sistema autoritario e quali le tecniche per annientare la personalità di un individuo? Quali rapporti si creano tra oppressori e oppressi? Chi sono gli esseri che abitano la “zona grigia” della collaborazione? Come si costruisce un mostro? Era possibile capire dall’interno la logica della macchina dello sterminio? Era possibile ribellarsi? E ancora: come funziona la memoria di un’esperienza estrema?'. Domande diverse da quelle cui rispondono in bianco e nero le semplificazioni. La realtà, non sempre raccontata perchè troppo complessa e anche carica di sensi di colpa, è grigia.

Forse tra tutti i libri letti su questa realtà questo è stato quello che mi ha più colpito. Levi analizza i meccanismi profondi del sistema lager, quelli che hanno consentito a degli esseri umani non così diversi dalle loro vittime di creare un sistema efficiente di sterminio senza soffrirne apparente rimorso. Un sistema 'scientifico' che aspirava a deumanizzarne le vittime, e addirittura a coinvolgerle in questa impresa facendo leva sull'istinto di sopravvivenza. Un passo alla volta, un sentimento alla volta, privandole pian piano della loro natura umana e riducendole praticamente allo stato larvale. Uno stato privo di aspirazioni di libertà e dignità, uno stato alienato e passivo in attesa della morte.

Mille riflessioni assolutamente non convenzionali sui diversi protagonisti, come quella dove Levi ipotizza che non siano stati i migliori ad essere sopravvissuti, ma probabilmente il contrario. I più opportunisti, i meno altruisti, quelli che avevano più possibilità di sopravvivere in un sistema materiale corrotto. Sicuramente non gli intellettuali che di quella condizione di deprivazione morale hanno sofferto, non le persone perbene. Per questo forse i sopravvissuti poi hanno deciso di non parlare o hanno portato avanti versioni semplificate più sopportabili. Così come hanno pure fatto gli oppressori, o almeno quelli che evitata la forca si son trovati in una Germania 'mondata' da tutte le sue colpe infinite.

Un libro diverso dal coro delle altre pur drammatiche testimonianze dunque. Un libro coraggioso che pure invita alla riflessione, ma a non abbassare la guardia. Primo Levi, il prigioniero numero 174517, passò il resto della sua vita a testimoniarlo, con le sue opere in Italia e anche in Germania, e a ricordare a tutti che 'se comprendere è impossibile, conoscere è necessario, perché ciò che è accaduto può ritornare, le coscienze possono nuovamente essere sedotte ed oscurate: anche le nostre' e che 'è avvenuto, quindi può accadere di nuovo: questo è il nocciolo di quanto abbiamo da dire'. Continuò a dirlo fino all’11 aprile 1987, quando venne trovato morto nell'atrio del palazzo ove viveva a Torino. L'ipotesi più accreditata, tra altre, fu quella del suicidio.

This third part of the Auschwitz trilogy consists of a number of essays written in the 1980s, looking back to Levi’s experiences in Auschwitz and attempting to understand and explain aspects of these experiences. He refers to characters and events documented in the previous two volumes of memoir If This Is a Man • The Truce.

Given the 40 years that passed since the events of the earlier books, this has a more detached and restrained tone and it lacks their painful immediacy. The issues explored are interesting, such as the question of how certain people managed to survive, the experience of survivors guilt and shame, and the reactions of readers in Germany to his books. As someone who has studied languages, I was particularly interested in the essay on communication, the jargon of the Lager and the impact that linguistic ability (for example, understanding some German) could have on survival.

I found this less compelling and emotionally impactful than the memoirs, but still worth reading for the clarity of ideas and the practical challenges contained within the intellectual ideas.

По повод първия превод на "Нима това е човек" в Германия през 1959 Примо Леви пише следното в началото на разказа си за необичайната ситуация:
Бях насъбрал в себе си тези неща и те ме владееха, така че трябваше да ги изкарам навън - да ги изрека, даже да ги изкрещя от покривите.
"Потъналите и спасените" трябва да бъде изкрещяна от покривите не по-малко силно, колкото и да е трудно да се крещи тишина.

A must read. A very moving and impactful non fiction read on the holocaust. MUST read.

This remarkable little book was so completely wonderful and soul-crushing and fascinating and thoughtful and utterly without pretension and I am in awe of Primo Levi's talent. There doesn't seem to be much of an overarching narrative or thesis to The Drowned and the Saved; rather, it reads more as a series of reflections on survival, on guilt, on culpability, on redemption. It is not sentimental and deals without restraint on uncomfortable topics like Jewish cooperation in the Nazi project, but it is also fundamentally empathetic to the moral complexities of human life. Levi's style is simple and elegant and gets to the heart of what it means to be alive in this world: from our deepest and most shameful sins to our immense capacity for compassion and generosity. It's good, good stuff.

Some of my favorite passages:

"Like Rumkowski, we too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting."

"Are you ashamed because you are alive in place of another? And in particular, of a man more generous, more sensitive, more useful, wiser, worthier of living than you? You cannot block out such feelings: you examine yourself, you review your memories, hoping to find them all, and that none of them are masked or disguised. No, you find no obvious transgressions, you did not usurp anyone's place, you did not beat anyone (but would you have had the strength to do so?), you did not accept positions (but none were offered to you...), you did not steal anyone's bread; nevertheless you cannot exclude it. It is no more than a supposition, indeed the shadow of a suspicion: that each man is his brother's Cain, that each one of us (but this time I say "us" in a much vaster, indeed, universal sense) has usurped his neighbor's place and lived in his stead. It is a supposition, but it gnaws at us; it has nestled deeply like a woodworm; although unseen from the outside, it gnaws and rasps."

"Yet, in every case, one can see that it is never the most oppressed individuals who stand at the head of movements: usually, in fact, revolutions are led by bold, open-minded leaders who throw themselves into the fray out of generosity (or perhaps ambition), even though they personally could have a secure and tranquil, perhaps even privileged life. The image so often repeated in monuments of the slave who breaks his heavy chains is rhetorical; his chains are broken by comrades whose shackles are lighter and looser."

I have read this book and so far I am very happy. I loved how candid Primo Levi expressed his views. He hid his thoughts on what he thinks about the mental ability of the witnesses who saw, heard, and were tortured by Hitler in his campaign to eliminate all the jews from Germany.

He raised an issue which has been the concern of many in the legal profession and from the law enforcement agencies. Witness protection has been a matter that most legal systems have been trying to achieve both at the national and international levels. Most court cases will fail if witnesses do not attend. Some dont choose not to attend, but are coerced by the suspects either through intimidation or threats.

Other witnesses may attend but the question is whether they can remember what happened to them. When Mr. Levi says that no witnesses can give the same account about what happened, he is right. Yes, it does not matter how recent the events are. It is simply impossible.

The other fallacy that he delves in concerns the tactics by the defence of coaching the suspects to selectively forget specific painful events. Suspects will easily lie in court by stating that they have either forgotten or do not know what happened. Lastly, the author was very open about his thoughts on suicide. He is reported to have committed suicide himself, but the jury is still out as to whether he indeed killed himself. All in all, it was a good book.

Leer a Primo Levi es lo mejor que podría haber hecho este verano. Un libro tan claro, tan directo y tan serio, capaz de levantar conciencia y hacer recordar y reflexionar como pocos. Se lo recomendaría a cualquier persona para ir mucho más allá de lo que sentimos que sabemos del genocidio nazi y del peligro del fascismo, con un relato sobrio y que no busca el sentimentalismo. Una obra maestra (toda la Trilogía)

NB !

second time reading Primo Levi and once again i am perplexed by his lucidity and eloquence. his books hurt to read. it pains me to know that we now, against his advice and warning, have become so distanced from the incomprehensible atrocities of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and the other camps. every so many sentences one imagines the terrible suffering which was forced upon the author, and indeed an entire people, and is left without words. i still reminisce about my sweet poetics class, where we would have indecipherable discussions about works like this one. i hope with Levi that, even when obscured or seemingly irrelevant to the present, we do not forget the past and the terrible things humanity is capable of. we can do better. the question is if we will

a review does books like this no justice, one should write an entire essay (and perhaps even then could not describe a work like this and the heavy implications and thoughts it bears on its scarred back)

Не мога да дам оценка на тази книга, напълно безсмислено е да я определя по скалата от 1 до 5. Едва 230 страници, а се преглъщат толкова трудно.
Това не е книга за концлагерите. Това е силен философски, интелектуален труд, размисъл, разговор със себе си. Десетилетия след лагера Примо Леви се опитва да разбере причините за това насилие и да разкаже за различните прояви на "оцеляването". Опитва се да разбере насилниците, за да ги съди. Опитва да обясни това индустриално избиване на хора, дехуманизирането чрез систематично унижение, както и действията на палачите, жертвите и съучастниците.

"Спасените" лагеристи не бяха най-достойните, призваните да вършат добрини, вестителите на правдата: всичко, което видях, доказваше тъкмо обратното. Оцеляваха преобладаващо най-лошите, себичните, агресивните, безчувствените, помагачите на властта от "сивата зона", доносниците... Спасиха се най-лошите, тоест най-приспособените - най-добрите умряха до един".

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

Όπως και το προηγούμενο βιβλίο του που διάβασα πρόσφατα, με εντυπωσίασε η διαύγεια με την οποία αντιμετωπίζει ένα συγκλονιστικό θέμα όπως το ολοκαύτωμα. Δε μπορώ καν να φανταστώ τί μπορεί να πέρασε ο συγγραφέας και όλοι όσοι είχαν την ατυχία να ζουν εκείνη την εποχή αλλά πραγματικά θαυμάζω την κριτική ματιά του. Μια εξαιρετική φράση που ίσως προκαλεί το θρησκευτικό αίσθημα των πιστών οποιουδήποτε δόγματος είναι εκείνη που ο συγγραφέας αναφέρεται στην εξόντωση των ελαχίστων θρησκευτικών ερεθισμάτων που είχε μετά την εμπειρία του. Όπως λέει και ο ίδιος «υπήρξε το Αουσβιτς, δε μπορεί να υπάρχει θεός.»