by Primo Levi
Lomnitz, an antiques dealer from Frankfurt, arrived; Joulty, a mathematician from Paris, arrived; Hirsch, a mysterious businessman from Copenhagen; Janek the Aryan, a giant railroad worker from Kraków; Elias, a dwarf from Warsaw, crude, mad, and probably a spy. The last to arrive was, as usual, Wolf, a pharmacist from Berlin, stooping, hook-nosed, and bespectacled, murmuring a musical theme. His Jewish nose cleaved the dark air like the prow of a ship: he called it, in Hebrew, hutménu, “our seal.”
“Here comes the enchanter, the oiler of scabies,” Elias announced ceremoniously. “Welcome among us, Most Illustrious Excellence, Hochwohlgeborener. Did you sleep well? What’s the news of the night? Is Hitler dead? Have the English landed?”
Wolf took his place in the row; his murmuring increased in volume, its tones were enriched and took on color, and some of his companions recognized the final notes of the Brahms Rhapsody no. 53. Wolf, a reserved and dignified man of forty, lived on music. He was permeated by it; new themes continuously followed one after another inside him, others he seemed to inhale, extracting them from the air of the camp, through his celebrated nose. He secreted music the way our stomachs secreted hunger; he reproduced with accuracy (but without virtuosic displays) individual instruments—now he was a violin, now a flute, now he was the conductor of the orchestra and, scowling, conducted himself.
Someone laughed, and Wolf (“Wolef,” pronounced in the Yiddish way) gestured, with irritation, for silence, he hadn’t finished yet. He sang intently, leaning forward, his eyes on the ground; soon, beside him, shoulder to shoulder, a knot of four or five men formed, in the same position, as if drawing warmth from a brazier at their feet. Wolf went from violin to viola, repeated the theme three times, in three glorious variations, and then ended it in a rich final chord. He discreetly applauded himself; others joined in, and Wolf bowed gravely. The applause ended, but Elias continued to clap his hands violently, crying, “Wolf, Wolef! Long live Wolef, Mangewolef. Wolef is the cleverest of all, and you know why?”
Wolf, returning to the dimensions of an ordinary mortal, looked at Elias distrustfully.
“Because he’s got scabies and he doesn’t scratch!” said Elias. “And that is a miracle. Blessed art Thou, our Lord God, King of the universe. I know them, those Prussians: the elder of the camp is Prussian, the scabies doctor is Prussian, Wolf is Prussian, and so you see, Wolf becomes the oiler, he becomes Mangewolf. But what can you say? He’s a marvelous oiler, he oils like a Jewish mama. It’s a dream the way he oils: even me he oiled, and cured me, praise be to God and praise be to all the Just. And because he oils everybody, now he’s got scabies, and he oils himself. Isn’t it true, Master? Ah yes, he’s oiling his stomach, because it starts there: he oils it secretly, every night. I’ve seen him, nothing escapes me. But he’s a strong man and he doesn’t scratch; the Just don’t scratch.”
“Nonsense,” said Janek the Aryan. “If you have scabies, you scratch. Scabies is like being in love: if you have it, it’s obvious.”
“All well and good, but Master Mangewolf has it and he doesn’t scratch. Didn’t I tell you, he’s the best of all?”
“Elias, you’re a liar, the biggest liar in the camp. It’s impossible to have scabies and not scratch.” Having spoken, Janek began to scratch, without realizing it, and little by little the others, too, began to scratch; after all, everyone had scabies, or was about to get it, or had just been cured. Elias pointed to Janek with an ogre-like laugh. “Uhh, see, see if Wolef isn’t a man of iron, even the healthy are scratching, and that mangy fellow is standing there like a king!” Then, suddenly, he rushed at Wolf, pulled down his pants, and raised his shirt. In the uncertain light of dawn, we could glimpse Wolf’s pale wrinkled stomach, covered with scratches and abrasions. Wolf jumped back, trying at the same time to push Elias away; but, shorter than Wolf by a whole head, Elias leaped up and seized him around the neck. They both fell to the ground, in the black mud. Elias was on top, and Wolf was gasping, half suffocated. Some tried to get between them, but Elias was strong, and clung to Wolf with arms and legs like an octopus. Wolf’s defenses became weaker and weaker, as he blindly sought to kick or knee Elias.
Luckily for Wolf, the Kapo showed up, administered kicks and punches impartially to the two men who were entangled on the ground, separated them, and lined everyone up: it was time to march to the job. The incident was not among the most memorable, and in fact it was soon forgotten, but the nickname “Mangewolf” (Krätzewolf) stuck tenaciously to the man, damaging his respectability, even months after he was cured of scabies and exempted from the job of oiling. He took it badly, suffering visibly from it, and thus contributing to its persistence.
Finally, a tentative spring arrived, and during one of the first periods of sun there was a Sunday afternoon without work, fragile and precious as a peach blossom. Everyone spent the time sleeping, the more energetic visiting other barracks, or trying to mend their rags or sew on buttons with wire, or filing their nails against a rock. But from a distance, following the caprices of the warm wind, fragrant with damp earth, came a new sound, a sound so improbable, so unexpected, that all raised their heads to listen. It was a weak sound, like that sky and that sun, and came from a distance, yes, but from within the boundaries of the camp. Some, conquering their inertia, began to hunt like bloodhounds, meeting with clumsy steps and ears alert: and they found Mangewolf, sitting on a pile of boards, ecstatically playing a violin. His “seal” vibrated, stretched to the sun, his nearsighted eyes were lost beyond the barbed wire, beyond the pale Polish sky. Where he had found a violin was a mystery, but the veterans knew that in a Lager anything can happen: maybe he had stolen it, maybe rented it for bread.
Wolf played for himself, but everyone who passed by stopped to listen with a greedy expression, like a bear who scents honey, eager, timid, and perplexed. A few feet away from Wolf, Elias lay on his belly on the ground, staring at him as if spellbound. On his gladiator’s face lay that veil of contented stupor which you sometimes notice on the faces of the dead, and which makes you think that, there on the threshold, they truly had, for an instant, the vision of a better world.
The Gypsy
A notice was pasted to the door of the barrack, and everyone crowded around to read it; it was written in German and Polish, and a French prisoner, squeezed between the crowd and the wooden wall, struggled to translate it and comment on it. The notice said that, as an exception, all prisoners were permitted to write to their relatives, under conditions that were minutely specified, in the German manner. One could write only on forms that the head of each barrack would distribute, one for each prisoner. The only language permitted was German. The only addressees permitted were those who resided in Germany or in occupied lands or in allied countries like Italy. We were not permitted to ask for food packages but were permitted to give thanks for packages possibly received. At this point the Frenchman energetically exclaimed, “Les salauds, hein!” and broke off.
The uproar and the crowding increased, and there was a confused exchange of opinions in various languages. Who had ever officially received a package or even just a letter? And, besides, who knew our address, assuming that “KZ Auschwitz” was an address? And to whom could we write, given that all our relatives were prisoners in some camp, like us, or dead, or hidden throughout the four corners of Europe in fear of following our destiny? Clearly, it was a trick; the thank-you letters postmarked “Auschwitz” would be shown to a delegation from the Red Cross, or some other neutral authority, to prove that the Jews of Auschwitz were not treated so badly, given that they received packages from home. A filthy lie.
Three factions formed: not to write at all; to write without thanks; to write and thank. The partisans of the last argument (few, in truth) maintained that the business of the Red Cross was likely but not certain, and that a possibility existed, however slim, that the letters would arrive at their destination, and the thank-you would be interpreted as an invitation to send packages. I decided to write without thanks,
addressing the letter to Christian friends who in some way would find my family. I borrowed a stub of a pencil, obtained the form, and prepared for the work. First I wrote a draft on a scrap of paper from a cement bag, the same I wore on my chest (illegally) to protect myself from the wind, then I began to rewrite the text on the form, but I felt uneasy. I felt, for the first time since my capture, in communication and in communion (even if only putative) with my family, and so I needed solitude; but solitude, in the camp, is rarer and more precious than bread.
I had the annoying impression that someone was watching me. I turned: it was my new bed companion. He was quietly watching me as I wrote, with the innocent but provocative gaze of a child, who doesn’t know the embarrassment of staring. He had arrived a few weeks earlier with a transport of Hungarians and Slovaks; he was slender and dark, and very young, and I didn’t know anything about him, not even his name, because he worked in a different squad from mine, and came to the bunk to sleep only at the moment of the blackout.
Any feeling of camaraderie among us was scant, limited to compatriots, and even with them was weakened by the minimal conditions of life. So it was nonexistent, or, rather, negative, toward newcomers. In this and in many other respects we were strongly regressed and hardened, and in a “new” companion we tended to see an alien, a clumsy and troublesome barbarian, who takes away space, time, and bread, who doesn’t know the silent but iron rules of living together and survival, and who, furthermore, complains; and he complains unjustly, in an irritating and ridiculous manner, because a few days ago he was still at home, or at least outside the barbed wire. The newcomer has only one virtue: he brings recent news of the world, because he has read newspapers and listened to the radio, maybe even Allied radio; but if the news is bad, for example, that the war isn’t going to be over in two weeks, he is nothing but a nuisance to avoid, or to mock for his ignorance, or to subject to cruel jokes.
That newcomer behind me, however, although he was spying on me, roused a vague sense of pity. He seemed harmless and disoriented, in need of support, like a child; certainly he had not grasped the importance of the choice to be made, whether to write and what to write, and felt neither anxiety nor suspicion. I turned my back, to keep him from seeing my sheet of paper, and continued my work, which wasn’t easy. I had to weigh every word, so that it would carry the maximum of information to the unlikely recipient, and yet not appear suspicious to the likely censor. The fact of having to write in German increased the difficulty: I had learned German in the camp, and it reproduced, without my having any idea, the impoverished, vulgar jargon of the barrack. I didn’t know many terms, especially those needed to express feelings. I felt inept, as if I had had to chisel that letter in stone.
My neighbor waited patiently until I had finished, then he said something in a language that I didn’t understand. I asked him in German what he wanted, and he showed me his form, which was blank, and pointed to mine, covered with writing: he was asking me, in other words, to write for him. He must have understood that I was Italian, and to better clarify his request he made a muddled speech in a simplified language that in fact was more Spanish than Italian. Not only did he not know how to write in German; he didn’t know how to write. He was a Gypsy, born in Spain, and had wandered through Germany, Austria, and the Balkans, to fall into the Nazis’ clutches in Hungary. He introduced himself politely: Grigo, his name was Grigo, he was nineteen, and he asked me to write to his girlfriend. He would compensate me. With what? With a gift, he answered without specifying. I asked him for bread: half a ration seemed to me a just price. Today I am a little ashamed of this request of mine, but I have to remind the reader (and myself) that the etiquette of Auschwitz was different from ours, and, besides, Grigo, as a recent arrival, was less hungry than I was.
In fact he accepted. I reached my hand toward his form, but he drew it back, and offered me instead another scrap of paper. It was an important letter; it was better to do a draft. He began to dictate the address of the girl. He must have caught a mote of curiosity, or maybe of envy, in my eyes, because he drew from his breast a photograph and showed it to me proudly: she was almost a child, with laughing eyes and a white kitten beside her. My respect for the Gypsy increased; it wasn’t easy to enter the Lager with a hidden photograph. Grigo, as if he needed to justify himself, explained that it wasn’t he who had chosen her, but, rather, his father. She was an official fiancée, not a girl who had simply been abducted.
The letter he dictated was a complicated letter of love and domestic details. It contained questions whose meaning escaped me, and news about the Lager that I advised Grigo to omit, because it was too compromising. Grigo insisted on one point: he wanted to tell the girl that he would send her a mugneca. A mugneca? Yes, a doll, Grigo explained, as well as he could. This made me uncomfortable for two reasons: because I didn’t know how to say “doll” in German, and because I couldn’t imagine why and how Grigo would or should undertake this dangerous and senseless operation. It seemed to me my duty to explain all this. I had more experience than he did, and I thought that my condition of scribe conferred on me some obligation.
Grigo gave me a disarming smile, a newcomer’s smile, but he didn’t explain much, I don’t know if out of inability, or linguistic strain, or precise intention. He told me that he absolutely had to send her the doll. That to get one wasn’t a problem: he would make it right there, and he showed me a fine pocket knife. No, this Grigo was certainly not a fool; yet again I was forced to admire him. He must have been very alert on entering the Lager, when they take away everything you have on you, even your handkerchief and your hair. Maybe he didn’t realize it, but a knife like his was worth at least five rations of bread.
He asked me to tell him if there was a tree somewhere from which he could cut a branch, because it would be better if the doll were made de madera viva, from living wood. I tried again to dissuade him by descending to his terrain: there were no trees, and, besides, wasn’t sending the girl a doll made with wood from Auschwitz like calling her here? But Grigo, with a mysterious expression, raised his eyebrows, touched his nose with his index finger, and said that, if anything, it was the opposite: the doll would call him outside, the girl knew what to do.
When the letter was finished, Grigo took out a ration of bread and offered it to me, along with the knife. It was customary, indeed an unwritten law, that in all payments based on bread one of the parties cut the bread and the other chose, since that way the cutter was led to make the portions as equal as possible. I was astonished that Grigo already knew the rule, but then I thought that maybe it was in use outside the camp, too, in the world, unknown to me, that Grigo came from. I cut, and he praised me courteously: that the two pieces were identical was to his disadvantage, but I had cut well, no doubt about it.
He thanked me, and I never saw him again. There’s no need to add that none of the letters we wrote that day ever reached their destination.
The Cantor and the Veteran
The new head of the barrack was German, but he spoke in an accent that, colored by his dialect, made his conversation barely comprehensible; he was about fifty, and was tall, muscular, and heavy. It was rumored that he was from the old guard of the German Communist Party, that he had taken part in the Spartacist Uprising, and had been wounded,1 but, since the camp was crawling with spies, this was not a subject that could be discussed out loud. He had a scar that ran obliquely between his bushy blond eyebrows, and certainly he was a veteran: he had been in the Lager for seven years, and under the red triangle of the political prisoner he proudly wore an unbelievably low number, the number 14. Before Auschwitz he had been at Dachau, and he was one of the founding fathers of Auschwitz. He had been part of the legendary patrol of thirty prisoners who were sent from Dachau to the swamps of Upper Silesia to build the first barracks; in other words, one of those who, in all human communities, claim the right to say “in my time,” and expect for that reason to be respected. He was respected, in fact: not so much for
his past as because he had powerful fists and reflexes that were still rapid. His name was Otto.
Now, Vladek didn’t wash. It was notorious, and provided the barrack with a subject of mockery and gossip; in fact it was comic, because Vladek wasn’t Jewish. He was a Polish boy from the countryside who received packages from home containing lard, fruit, and woolen socks; in other words he was potentially a person of consequence. And yet he didn’t wash. He was scrawny and clumsy, and as soon as he returned from work he retreated to his bunk, without talking to anyone. The fact is that Vladek didn’t have the brain of a chicken, poor fellow, and if he hadn’t had the privilege of getting packages, much of the contents of which was stolen anyway, he would have ended up in the gas chamber long since, although he, too, bore the red triangle of a political prisoner. Some politician Vladek must have been!
Otto had called him to order several times, because the head of a barrack is responsible for the cleanliness of his subjects, first kindly, that is to say with insults shouted in his dialect, then by kicking and hitting, but in vain. To all appearances, Vladek (who, besides, barely understood German) was incapable of connecting causes with effects, or didn’t remember the blows from one day to the next. There came a warm Sunday in September; it was one of the rare non-working Sundays, and Otto let us know that there would be a celebration, in fact a spectacle that had never been seen before, which he was offering free to all the inhabitants of Barrack 48: the public washing of Vladek. He had one of the soup vats carried outside, cursorily rinsed, and filled with hot water from the showers; he put Vladek in it, naked and upright, and washed him personally, as you might wash a horse, scrubbing him from head to toe first with a brush and then with rags for cleaning the floor.