by Primo Levi
La Stampa, May 20, 1979
Images from Holocaust
In the beginning, there is “show business”—in other words, the gigantic machine of the American culture industry. It’s an industry subject to the same requirements, laws, and practices that apply to all other industries. It involves forecasts, market analyses, budgets, amortizations, risks, and carefully planned publicity campaigns, and its aim is profit. Like all other industries, it relies on its own past experience and that of others, and experience shows that the highest profits are obtained through a careful balance of creativity and conservatism. These are the practical and logical premises on which Operation Holocaust was based, Roots, a little earlier, was planned, and colossal Biblical productions have been conceived since the dawn of moviemaking. These enterprises are simultaneously cynical and pious, and the contradiction shouldn’t surprise us, since there is no single author: the authors are many and among them some are cynical and some pious. I don’t think that serious objections can be raised; since the time of Aeschylus, public shows have drawn on the sources that are most appealing to the public, and these are crime, fate, human suffering, oppression, destruction, and redemption.
The TV series Holocaust originated this way, as a marriage of convenience, but not all marriages of convenience end in failure. I admit without hesitation to my suspicion and irritation at the initial, triumphal news coverage. I was afraid that the cynicism would be enormous and the compassion marginal; it’s well-known that, since immediately after the Second World War, Hitler’s massacres and the concentration camps have proved to be an excellent topic for literary endeavors and more. It was predictable and obvious that the blood, the slaughter, the intrinsic horror of what happened in Europe in those years would attract myriad second-rate writers looking for easy subjects, and that that vast tragedy would be tampered with, chopped into pieces, arbitrarily sorted through in order to obtain fragments suitable for satisfying the turbid thirst for the macabre and the obscene that is supposed to dwell in the depths of every reader and consumer. This desecrating “use” did punctually occur, and not just at the hands of second-rate writers: it’s enough to remember, among many other books, Der Funke Leben (Spark of Life), by Erich Maria Remarque, an eloquent example of how a substantially false novel can be constructed on true events, such as to undermine the credibility of the very events it intends to describe. One can say the same, or almost the same, of the sadistic-pornographic genre, whose progenitor was probably the abominable Casa di bambola (House of Dolls).1 The book was written by a former deportee, but, unfortunately, no law of the human soul prescribes that everyone who lived an experience, no matter how terrible and defining, possesses the spiritual tools necessary to understand it, judge it, grasp its limits, and convey it to others. House of Dolls describes a brothel in a Lager. Brothels existed as a marginal, and not particularly tragic, accessory in some Lagers: but flocks of ravens have fed on them, filling screens around the world with an avalanche of indecent movies, and giving the impression that all the women’s Lagers, rather than places of suffering, death, and political development, were nothing but theaters for refined (and not always refined) sadism.
My distrust diminished when I had the opportunity to see the audience ratings for Holocaust in the United States, France, Israel, Germany, and Austria. In itself, a large audience doesn’t prove much: at most, it’s evidence of the fact that TV viewers were interested in the show, but it doesn’t say anything about the show’s quality. It turns out, however, that at the end of each episode the broadcast stations were inundated by tens of thousands of phone calls; that the series was the starting point for lengthy debates (Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of Germany took part in one that lasted several hours); that in the United States, although it is geographically and ideologically far from the events, a guide and commentary was published for use in schools, accompanied by a thorough bibliography. So the story must be something more than mere entertainment; somehow, at some level, the spectators must have been drawn in.
I then tried to watch Holocaust with the eyes of a neutral spectator, neither involved nor prejudiced, “protecting myself” to the extent possible from my reactions as a former deportee, and I believe I succeeded. Having thus discounted my personal emotions, which existed, and filtered out and canceled the moments of violent identification with some of the characters, I can say that the story is dignified and almost entirely of a high standard, and that, most of all, it doesn’t abuse the white-hot material it was based on. The authors had a sense of balance and didn’t give in to the temptations of the macabre, the base, the shocking, although it’s well-known that what’s shocking “pays.” A visible effort has been made not to lapse into stereotypes, to provide the characters with individuality. On the other hand, the historical depth of the story is insufficient, or inadequate, and here the question becomes more complicated.
The roots of Nazism, of Nazi anti-Semitism, and of the parallel yet different popular anti-Semitism of the Russians and Poles (which is often referred to in the story) are remote and complex. They can’t be understood without referring to the views of the nineteenth-century German philosophers, to the tormented history of the Jews in Europe since the destruction of the Second Temple, to the theological doctrines propagated by Catholics, both orthodox and reformed.
Hitler cannot be understood without knowing anything of the wound inflicted on German pride by the 1918 defeat, of the successive revolutionary efforts, of the catastrophic inflation of 1923, of the violence of the “Free Corps,” of the dizzying political instability of the Weimar Republic. I am not saying that all this would be sufficient to understand Hitlerism, but certainly it is necessary, and Holocaust doesn’t mention it. The viewer gets the impression that Nazism sprang out of nowhere, the diabolical work of cold-blooded fanatics like Heydrich or sinister cutthroats with a swastika on their sleeve, or that it was the product of some intrinsic and unexplained German wickedness. A corresponding lack of political context, and a similar simplification, can be found in the episode of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. This momentous and desperate fight, which will never be forgotten and which in the show achieves an extremely high level of tension, was not just a heroic attempt to reaffirm the dignity of a victimized people. It was also the continued development of an old and many-sided effort, reviving the stoic virtue of the defenders of Masada against Titus’ powerful army, the millenarian and messianic zeal of early Zionism, and the interpretation of the Marxist vision by the Jewish proletariat of Warsaw, doubly oppressed, as proletarian and as Jewish.
On the other hand, it’s only fair not to demand too much. The savagery and the excess of the Nazi Holocaust, represented with shocking realism in many scenes, harbored within themselves an enigma that no historian has yet solved. This explains the reason for the innumerable phone calls that flooded the TV stations in the countries where the serial has been shown so far. Most of the callers were asking “why,” and this “why” is gigantic and as old as humankind. It’s the “why” of evil in the world, Job’s vain question to God, and there are many, partial answers; however, the global, universal answer that might soothe the spirit is not known, and maybe it doesn’t exist. It’s possible to explain, and sociologists, politicians, and ethnologists have done so, why minorities are hated and persecuted, and why in particular the Jewish minority was persecuted in Germany. But it can’t be explained why the Nazis took the trouble to hunt down the elderly and the dying and transport them halfway across Europe to Auschwitz to be burned to ashes. It can’t be explained why, in the tragedy and chaos of a war that was by then lost, the convoys of deportees had precedence over troop and ammunition transports. Most of all, and apart from any example of bestiality, no one so far has understood why the determination to destroy the “enemy” should be accompanied by an even stronger determination to impose on him the most atrocious sufferings imaginable, to humiliate him, to vilify him, to treat him like a filthy beast, or, worse, like an inanimate object. This really is
the unique characteristic of Nazi persecution; it seems to me that the series intended to show this, and that it succeeded.
Much could be said about the general structure of Holocaust and its adherence to historic truth. It has recognizable features that seem “quoted” from illustrious precedents, whether introduced unconsciously, thanks to the marvelous vitality of the classics, or deliberately. The revolt in the ghetto is a page from Les Misérables: it has barricades, Gavroche, and the escape through the sewers. When young Peter, the son of Erik Dorf, sees his father in an SS uniform for the first time, he shrinks back in tears, “frightened by his father’s fierce weapons, ” just as in the Iliad Astyanax shrinks from Hector returning armed from camp. Erik’s wife, Marta, is, like Lady Macbeth, implacable in spurring her ambivalent husband’s ambition, and in urging him on, from crime to crime, until the end.
Erik Dorf is the main character in the story, or at least the most problematic and articulate, and embodies a double ambition: his own, first as a ruthless careerist, then as a cunning and cruel advisor, and, finally, as a member, subject to blackmail but dangerous, of a Nazi élite torn apart by intrigue and jealousy. And there is also the authors’ ambition to make Erik into a concrete representation, a reverse example, emblematic, of the German who, blinded by the Nazi myth, loses his human nature. A young lawyer from Berlin, frustrated, poor, and insecure, Erik follows the all-powerful Heydrich: he is bewitched by the person and, even more, by the power he emanates, which Erik wants to share. A “confused and indecisive” bureaucrat, Erik is torn between his moralistic upbringing and his fascination with authority, active and passive, but the latter quickly prevails and Erik becomes a fraudulent counselor, or rather “the” counselor to the Nazi court. After Kristallnacht, it’s Erik who, mindful of his legal studies, advises Heydrich to let the insurance companies pay the Jews the damages; afterward, the government “will confiscate the payments, on the grounds that the Jews incited the rioting and hence are not entitled to reimbursement.” It’s Erik who proposes that Jewish property should be burned and destroyed by Nazis in civilian clothes and not in uniform, so that the event appears to be spontaneous. It’s Erik again who later invents the well-known periphrases that concealed the slaughter: “resettlement” meaning deportation, “final solution” meaning massacre, “special treatment” meaning gassing. It’s Erik who suggests the use of Zyklon B, that is, hydrogen cyanide, instead of carbon monoxide in the gas chambers. He is even credited with the hope of persuading future public opinion, through cunning propaganda, that the Jews never suffered any abuse. Overwhelmed by the German military collapse and by his superiors’ defection, Erik kills himself by swallowing a poison pill during his interrogation by an American officer. Throughout this career of sleazy power and interior servitude, Erik, excellently played by Michael Moriarty, has occasional jolts of humanity that culminate precisely in his suicide. Erik’s character is acceptable as fiction, but it is spoiled by its historical impossibility. It seems to me that this character perpetuates the mistake of concentrating the blame for Nazism in one or a few persons, or even in the Devil, ignoring its historical roots and the broad support of the German people. It’s clear that this character is meant to symbolize the very many Eriks who made up the backbone of that Germany, but unfortunately many viewers, seeing him on the screen next to unique historical individuals like Himmler and Eichmann, may believe that Erik, too, is a unique historical figure.
A parallel symbolic burden weighs on the Weiss family: they are the assimilated Jews par excellence. Dr. Weiss, a Jew of Polish origin, feels deeply integrated into German society; he tends to underestimate the first signs of racism, saying that “it will all go away.” His wife agrees: isn’t Germany the homeland of Schiller and Beethoven? An accomplished pianist, she seeks illusory refuge in music, while around them, from 1935 to 1939, the Nazi barbarity rages. They don’t try to emigrate: step by step, after participating heroically in the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the doctor, being of Polish extraction, had been banished, they die in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Karl, their firstborn, also dies in Auschwitz: he has been sent there as punishment because he tried to leave testimony, “for the record,” of the horrors that took place in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Anna, the younger daughter, is raped and loses her mind. She disappears into Hadamar, one of the sinister “hospitals” where the mentally handicapped were secretly killed with toxic gasses.
Rudi is the family’s only survivor; he is an athlete, inclined by nature and upbringing to give blow for blow. Rudi won’t tolerate being suffocated by the web of persecution. He flees to Czechoslovakia, then to Ukraine; he joins a group of Jewish partisans and reluctantly learns to kill. Captured, Rudi is taken to the Sobibór Lager, where, with a group of Soviet soldiers, he blows up the fence and returns to freedom, in which he, alone in the family, had never given up hope. He gladly agrees to accompany a dozen Jewish children, Lager survivors from Salonika, to Palestine, as illegal immigrants, in violation of the British blockade.
The truthfulness of the events shown in Holocaust has been much debated, and will continue to be debated. These debates are unwarranted: the basic facts are rigorously true, documented by extensive historical evidence, including, prominently, the confessions of the guilty who were captured by the Allies and brought to justice after the end of the hostilities. Besides, a good part of the dialogue, the more or less secret meetings of the Nazi bosses, the secret or public orders, the proclamations, and the biographical details are taken from German documents, or have been faithfully reconstructed from them. The authors didn’t need to resort to imagination: Kristallnacht, the elimination of the handicapped, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, the horrendous mass grave of Babi Yar, women lined up, unaware (and at times not unaware!), waiting for death by gas, the hopeless insurrection of the Warsaw Jews, the bloody and victorious rebellion of Sobibór—they all happened, and happened as they are presented here. They are historical truths questioned only by the perpetrators who still feel burdened by them, or by fools who are incapable of facing reality; and since perpetrators and fools do exist, these truths are occasionally and laughably questioned. It’s not worth devoting too much time to this issue: let them explain where the six million Jews missing after 1945 are, and the question will be settled. Not much remains to be said about the unavoidable inaccuracies and naïvetés of the production, such as insurgents who are too neatly shaved, Auschwitz jackets that are too clean, ghetto rooms that are surprisingly spacious: these result from the writers’ residual trust in the humanity of those times and places rather than from negligence.
It’s predictable that in Italy, too, there will be a debate over the propriety of broadcasting “such horrors” to a wide TV audience. It will be fitting to remind those who don’t know, and those who would rather forget, that the Holocaust reached Italy, too, although the war was nearing its end and most Italians proved immune to the racist poison. There were between thirty-two and thirty-five thousand Jews in Italy at the time, and of these some eight thousand were deported; only three or four hundred returned. Roundups were ordered by the occupying Germans, but were often carried out by the Fascist police and militias, and not always unwillingly, since a monetary reward was paid for each captured Jew. Why remain silent?
I have spoken about this TV series, occasionally disagreeing, and trying to point out its merits and its shortcomings, without hiding the tangle of emotion, uneasiness, and respect that it provoked in me. I would like to add an observation. The Weimar Republic, in which Nazism originated, was characterized by political instability, rampant violence, and a widespread hope for a messianic and irrational solution—the intervention of the necessary Hero, Germany’s savior, predicted by Nietzsche. At the same time, Nazi doctrine instilled in people’s minds an equally irrational and much more pernicious conviction: that all the ills of Germany and of the world came from a single source, from an evil-incarnate Super-enemy, the Jewish people. Once this scapegoat was destroyed, Germany would triumph. Now,
the scapegoat was exterminated in the European Holocaust, but, next to the six million Jews killed, at least fifty million other men, women, and children died in a ruthless war. More than ten million of them were German.
Speciale del Radiocorriere TV, May 1979
1. The author used the pseudonym Ka-tzetnik 135633.
In the Women’s Lager
Il fumo di Birkenau,1 by the Pisan Liana Millu, first printed in a very limited edition in 1947, is among the most intense European testimonies about the women’s Lager of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and certainly the most touching of the Italian ones. It comprises six stories that unfold around the more specifically female aspects of the prisoners’ miserable and desperate lives. The condition of women prisoners was much worse than that of the men, for several reasons: their lower physical resistance in the face of tasks that were heavier and more humiliating than the men’s; the torments of family love; the obsessive presence of the crematoriums, whose unavoidable, undeniable chimneys rose right in the middle of the women’s camp, corroding with their ungodly smoke the days and the nights, moments of truce and of illusion, dreams and timid hopes.
The author rarely appears in the foreground. She is an eye that penetrates, an admirably alert mind that, in language that is always dignified and measured, registers and transcribes events that are nevertheless beyond human measure. Each story closes on a muted note, on a death knell, a life that dies out, and it’s striking how these individual, personal deaths, all tragic but all different, affect our sensibility much more than the millions of anonymous deaths reported by the statistics.