by Primo Levi
I submitted my manuscript to two publishers, who rejected it with routine excuses. It’s possible that they were right, at least from a commercial point of view; the time wasn’t ripe, the public wasn’t ready to comprehend and measure the nature and importance of the Lager phenomenon. Indeed, when a third publisher (De Silva, in Turin, which at the time was headed by Franco Antonicelli) accepted the book and published it, it came to a standstill after selling barely two thousand copies, along with the publishing house and my slim hopes of a literary future.
The book was well received by the critics, but after a year If This Is a Man was forgotten. It was still talked about in Turin, among a narrow group of readers who were particularly sensitive or had been personally affected. Ten years went by. The public read Vercors’s Weapons of the Night, Scourge of the Swastika by Lord Russell of Liverpool, the two books by David Rousset, Piero Caleffi’s It Is Easy to Say Hunger, Robert Antelme’s The Human Race, Ernst Wiechert’s Forest of the Dead. People started to talk again about concentration camps, with greater detachment and from a broader perspective, as a part of history and no longer as an emotional chronicle. In 1957 Einaudi agreed to reprint the book. Since then, it has taken on, so to speak, a life of its own. In 1959 the British and North American editions appeared, in 1961 the French and German editions, in 1962 it was translated into Finnish, in 1963 into Dutch. In the meantime, in 1962, I had started to write The Truce, a sequel to If This Is a Man, and a diary of my difficult journey home. The Truce had barely begun when I received a letter. Radio Canada announced that it had adapted If This Is a Man for the radio and was asking my advice on certain details. Soon afterward, I received the script and a tape recording. I had probably never received such a welcome gift—it was not only an excellent work but, for me, a true revelation. The authors of the script, far away in time and space, and strangers to my experience, had drawn from the book everything I had put into it, and even something more: a spoken “meditation,” on a high technical and dramatic level and, at the same time, meticulously faithful to reality. They had understood very well the importance of the lack of communication in the camp, exacerbated by the lack of a common language, and had courageously based their work on this theme, the theme of the tower of Babel, of the confusion of languages:
“For the listener whose only language is English, we believe that this use of foreign languages will not prove a hindrance. The sense of what is said in them is nearly always evident either from the context or else from Levi’s comments on it and when it is not thus evident, when for a moment we grope in the bewilderment of alien and incomprehensible speech—then in a sense we can enter briefly into part of Levi’s experience, for this isolation was a real part of what he was made to suffer. And what he suffered, what all the concentration camp prisoners suffered, was a deliberate attempt to exile them from the community of mankind, to destroy their identity, to reduce them from men to things.”
The initiative, its outcome, and the medium of radio itself, new to me, were enthralling. A few months later I proposed to RAI an Italian adaptation of the book, which I had written, not quite retranslating the Canadian version but developing the episodes that I thought were most appropriate, and preserving, within reasonable limits, that technique of multilingual dialogue that seemed to me fundamental.
It was my friend Pieralberto Marché’s idea to adapt the book for the theater. At first I was opposed to his suggestion. It seemed to me that If This Is a Man had already changed skins too many times, that I had already cooked it in too many sauces; I was afraid of boring the public. I was also afraid of the theater itself: I didn’t know it well enough, either as a spectator or as a reader, to go about such an undertaking. The audience that reads or listens to the radio is distant, hidden, anonymous; the audience in a theater is there, looks at you, waits for you to make a wrong move. It judges you.
On the other hand, it was, once again, a question of telling a story: this time, in fact, of telling a story in the most immediate manner, of making diverse and vaster audiences relive our experience, ours and that of our dead comrades—inflicting it on them, to see and measure and test their reactions. Thus, in spite of my doubts, in spite of the obvious dangers and a sense of violated reserve, I agreed to bring the Lager to the stage, and began working with Marché.
We tried to say everything, and at the same time not to overdo it. The material was too hot already; it was a question of distilling it, channeling it, drawing from it a universal and civilizing message, guiding the spectator to a conclusion, to a verdict, without yelling in his ears, without presenting it ready-made. To this end, for example, the SS never appear onstage, and we looked for the marginal episodes and aspects of camp life, the moments of relief, of reflection, of dreaming, of rest. We also tried to preserve the original human impulse of each character, even when it was worn down by the continuous conflict with the savage and inhuman environment of the camp.
From the dramatized version of If This Is a Man (Turin: Einaudi, 1966)
1. The title character of Il parlamento de Ruzante (The Dialogue of Ruzante), by the Italian actor and playwright Angelo Beolco (1496–1542). In this short dialogue, Ruzante tells of his return from the Venetian war front, only to find that he has lost his wife, his land, and his honor.
The Deportation of the Jews
Since I was a Jew and was therefore banished from the army and the university, around September 81 I joined a group of partisans. We met large numbers of Italian soldiers coming from France, from all over Italy, traveling in the opposite direction—some were going home, others were looking for weapons, still others were looking for a leader.
All the former soldiers we talked to had only one thing to say: we must no longer fight along with the Germans. They had seen what the Germans had done—they had been to the front in Greece, in Yugoslavia, in Russia—and were saying: “This is not war, these are not allies, they are not soldiers—they are not men.” The unity that bound us originated in this very human testimony, which is that of humanity pure and simple, and, in spite of the Italians’ many flaws, is still alive in Italy. This, it seems to me, is the first element that we must not neglect in describing the contribution of the interned soldiers.
The second is this: although I was captured as a partisan, foolishly, unconsciously, if you will, I declared myself to be Jewish and ended up in the camp at Auschwitz.
Next to the labor camp where I worked was the camp where English, American, Russian, Polish, French, and even Italian prisoners were held. Some were soldiers, others were rounded-up civilians, still others were the so-called volunteer workers. The Italian prisoners weren’t much better off than we were. It’s true that in their camps there were no gas chambers and crematoriums, and this is a very important detail, but at first their living situation and their clothes were not very different from ours.
Nevertheless, we all received help from those Italian soldiers, who, because they were specialized workers or had a trade, found themselves in better conditions. And help came not just from them but also from the Italian civilian prisoners, and everyone was grateful for it, not just we Italians. The kindness of our compatriots was touching. The Germans knew that the Italians were “brava gente,”2 as they said scornfully, and this was true, it was generally accepted. I think this is consistent with what we discussed at length tonight, namely the high percentage of Italian soldiers—nearly all of them—who refused to join the Republic of Salò, because it implied endorsement of Nazism and of the inhumanity of the Nazi systems.
That said, and although I was arrested as a partisan, I bring here, tonight, the testimony of all those who had no choice; while for the youth, the youth of my generation, there could have been a choice (and in my case it came later): the choice of saying no, of not joining.
I bring the testimony of those who could not choose, that is to say of all Italian and foreign Jews. These people had no choice: women, old people, people who had been excluded for years from any contact with the outs
ide world. They had lived clandestinely since 1939, and for them a choice was clearly impossible. I should say almost impossible, because in spite of everything, in spite of the enormous difficulties, in spite of the absence of an organization, there was resistance. Not only within the Jewish, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian minorities but also in the concentration camps themselves, groups merged and collaborated with other clandestine movements that arose and operated in all the camps.
Of course, the question is different for those who were in the camps for political prisoners and those who were, instead, in concentration camps like Auschwitz, where the majority were Jews. The reasons are obvious: in a camp of political prisoners or where the majority were political prisoners, the detainees had behind them a school, a hard school, where they had received an education in politics. They were for the most part vigorous men, at the peak of their strength, for whom deportation had occurred, in many cases, in the middle of their normal professional career. Then, there was a natural solidarity, at least among national groups and also because of political affinities. In the camp at Auschwitz, things were different. It was a Babel, at least for us Italians; it was like falling into darkness, in other words being catapulted into a world that was not understandable and that we could not comprehend. We didn’t comprehend it for many reasons: to begin with, the language, and then because the camp was governed by iron rules that no one taught us and that we had to learn through intuition, speaking little, making mistakes, dying. And, further, because the mosaic of nationalities, places of origin, and ideologies was so complicated and confused that it took months to orient yourself, and in months you were dead.
At Auschwitz, 95 percent of the prisoners were Jews and around 5 percent were political prisoners and so-called greens, meaning common criminals. Legally, there was no difference, but in fact a difference existed, and it was enormous. Almost all the political prisoners and the greens were Germans, and the Germans themselves never forgot this. Even the German Communists, the majority of whom had been exterminated by Hitler, were considered totally different from the Jews, because of their language and their race. The German political prisoners, who often behaved very well toward us, had been prisoners for five or ten or twelve years, and everyone knows what it means to “have a career.” They had had a career; those who hadn’t weren’t there anymore. So, outside all the rules, they did receive different treatment or organized it for themselves, even though they had no right to it.
The average life span in the camp where I worked, which was a good one because it was a labor camp, was three months. In three months the population was halved, but it was replenished with new arrivals. I said it was a good camp for a number of reasons, because it was a labor camp, because there were many opportunities to make contact with Italian soldiers, even with English soldiers; the barrier that separated us from the world was not completely impermeable and some breaches, some gaps, existed. But everyone knows what the camp at Birkenau was. It was a camp that you couldn’t leave, where there was no talk of an average life span; its sole purpose was destruction. . . .
I’m not saying this to establish a priority or an aristocracy among those who were interned, far from it. I only wanted to note that, in spite of the circumstances, even in the camp at Auschwitz a resistance movement arose; it was not just clandestine but came to light with an episode that, to this day, is outside history, because it had no survivors: the sabotage of the cremation ovens.
It is to be hoped that in some way we will be able—on the basis of a surviving witness, on-site investigations—to clarify fully the way it happened. In those zero conditions, of nothingness, a nucleus of people was nevertheless able not only to blow up the cremation ovens but also to find weapons and fight the Germans, to kill many of them and attempt to escape.
It is also worth remembering that some thirty men were able to cross the boundary of the camp. They were returned to the Germans by the Poles, who had an insane fear of the Germans. And so these few dozen heroes who had succeeded in making a hole in Auschwitz for the first time—that was to be not only for themselves but also for the whole population of the camp—saw their attempt fail miserably.
Quaderni del Centro Studi Sulla Deportazione e l’Internamento,
no. 4 (1967)
1. On September 8, 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allies, and Hitler immediately took possession of northern and central Italy, installing a puppet government, with Mussolini as its head, known as the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, or Republic of Salò.
2. “Good folk”: an expression at times used by Italians when referring to themselves.
“More than Any Other Country Israel Must Live”
I would like to follow up on what Carlo Casalegno1 said the day before yesterday. He talked about the young people in Israel, in whose eyes, he observed, one reads neither fear nor anxiety. I have to admit: a profound anxiety has arisen in me recently. It’s an anxiety distinct from fear, which I also feel, and which I think every man with a conscience should feel when faced with the prospect of war. It’s an anxiety that has its roots in distant but ever-present memories of places that should no longer exist, of experiences and acts of violence that we hoped had been erased from the history of civilization; but lately words have been superimposed on these memories, words that we thought were extinct. The language is absurd and savage, not new: “With the help of God, we will win and we will exterminate our enemy.”
I can’t imagine a worse blasphemy. On the panels behind me is written, “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain,” but this is worse than taking his name in vain—it is calling for his help in a massacre. Are there still people in this world who believe in holy war, and equate it with total war?
Heaven knows how much we love peace. I mean all of us, but particularly those of us who have experienced the most repugnant aspect of total war, the extermination camp. Heaven knows how deeply we believe that peace implies tolerance, is tolerance; how we have preached it, and supported it, and practiced it as much as possible, so that the responsibilities of the ungodly would not be attributed to the righteous. As a result, because it is a matter of pride—a vital necessity, in fact—for us to feel that we are in the right, that we are honest, we have tried with all our might to resist what our feelings naturally suggested to us; we have tried to judge from on high, from above the fray. This has not been easy—the relationship of every Jew, even if he is not a Zionist, to the State of Israel is obvious and profound. Dare I say that such is also the relationship of every Christian to Israel and, indeed, of every civilized man? I would like to be able to answer yes; I would like to know that everyone sees Israel as we see it—as a small country, originating in persecution and massacre, to be a guarantee and a seal that there will be no more persecutions, no more massacres. As a socialist country, heir to both ancient and modern traditions, seeking its own difficult equilibrium, but open to political dialogue, receptive to all opinions, maybe even those we find repugnant. As a country created out of nothing, thanks to labor, as “the land”—the emblematic land, the land one “ascends to,” to build on and to be built by. Finally, as a country of return, unique and irreplaceable, like the country of the Bible, in which every hill, every road takes us back in spirit to the generations that preceded us.
We have tried, we have made an effort, not to give in to feelings; to bury in ourselves, to silence these so to speak personal bonds that tie us to Israel. What is left? What remains to confirm our feelings of solidarity? It is my conviction that something remains, and not a little, but a lot; certain considerations remain, which I think are universal and fundamental, and because of which Israel must live.
Israel must live, in the first place, because every country must live and every man must live. Just as there can be no offense for which a man should be killed, there is no political circumstance in which a country should be destroyed, a population exterminated. Do not speak to us of retaliation. The existence of Israel may be inconvenient for some, may be harmful t
o some reputations, but it threatens no one; if there is a people in this world that has millions of graves on its conscience, that is not us. Israel threatens no one, above all for the same reason that Finland doesn’t threaten the Soviet Union and Albania never threatened Italy—namely, because it has a far smaller population and is not governed by madmen.
Israel must therefore survive, because, like every other country, it has the right to live—but it is not a country like other countries. It is a country with its back against the wall, from a geographical point of view and from a spiritual point of view. It is not asked to renounce one of its provinces, or to abandon a political structure, or to break an alliance: it is asked simply to cease to exist. This is perhaps (I say perhaps) more a war cry than a considered objective, but everyone should understand that, for Israel and for us, the words have a sinister sound—in the not too distant past that threat was formulated at length and carried out, slowly, methodically, relentlessly, and without mercy. Everyone should remember that the generation that created Israel consists almost entirely of people who escaped the massacre of Judaism in Europe. This is not a figure of speech or an exaggeration, but is literally true, man for man. The pioneers of Zionism are the survivors of the tsarist pogroms, of the ghettos, of the mass graves, of Hitler’s Lagers. For this reason, I say, Israel is not like other countries; it is a country to which the whole world is indebted, it is a country of witnesses and martyrs, and it is also the country of the insurgents of Warsaw, of Sobibór, and of Treblinka. If it is criminal to speak of “torre via” Florence,2 or any other country, the goal of inflicting dispersion and massacre on the survivors of dispersion and massacre is doubly criminal—and we wouldn’t mind if some new Ghibelline, without for this ceasing to be a Ghibelline, expressed his thoughts openly on the matter.