The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  I am amazed to recall that, in that August of 1943, so laden with tragedy, we went to the mountains for the holidays without much concern for the future. We did not believe we could influence the future in any way; we felt a shadow of indolent resentment, of spite toward Fascist Italy. Italy had rejected us? All right, let it meet its destiny, whatever that might be, but without us.

  Besides, we had spoken with anti-Fascist friends who were older and more experienced, and they had reassured us. Badoglio was not naïve, there were first-class armored divisions at the Brenner and the other mountain passes; even if Italy were to ask the Allies for an armistice, the Germans could not get in, and those who were already in Italy would be trapped. Nothing to fear, there would be a separate peace and the Allies would reach the Alps in the blink of an eye. We left Milan during a heavy bombardment, and went on holiday with the clear conscience of fatalists. By September 8 we had already returned to the city. The news of the armistice filled us with foolish delight. That was it, peace, and with peace the return to just laws, to equality, to fraternity; not even Hitler, confronted by the enormous leak that had opened on his southern front, could hold out for long.

  So the war was almost over, and, with it, fascism and Nazism, discrimination, humiliation, and servitude would end. We shared the mood of our remote ancestors after the flight from Egypt, after the waters of the Red Sea had closed over Pharaoh’s chariots. Some among us hastened to make plans; we could resume our studies, we could seek to enter professions we had been excluded from.

  Our joy and our plans were short-lived. News items followed one another at a frantic pace: the King and Badoglio had fled Rome without giving any orders to the armed forces; Italian soldiers were disarmed by the Germans, loaded by the hundreds of thousands onto sealed trains and deported to Germany; Mussolini was freed with mocking ease from his detention in the Gran Sasso.

  Germany was neither dead nor dying; three days after the armistice, the green-gray snake of Nazi divisions had already invaded the streets of Milan and Turin. The show was over, Italy was an occupied country like Poland, like Yugoslavia, like Norway.

  During the forty-five days of the Badoglio government, some of us had tenuous political contacts with the Action Party, which had just emerged from the underground but had not had time to organize a network of political and military resistance. Without a clear plan, I left Milan and joined my family, who had fled to the hills near Turin; later I went up the Valle d’Aosta to stay with friends.

  The situation was hopeless, and the sight unforgettable. The shreds of the Italian forces that had occupied southern France were flooding back in disarray into Italy through all the mountain passes; only a few soldiers had been able or had wanted to keep their weapons, and all were looking anxiously for civilian clothes. Avoiding the railway and the roads at the bottom of the valley, they marched endlessly on the high mule tracks, from hamlet to hamlet, like a flock with no shepherd. They were tired, demoralized, hungry; they asked for bread, milk, polenta, and wanted nothing but to return home, walking over the entire arc of the Alps if necessary. They had had enough of the uniform they were still wearing: What good was it? Good for nothing, only for falling into German hands.

  I spent some weeks unable to make up my mind. Contributing to the fight against the Nazis was an absolute obligation: they were my enemies, the enemies of humanity, now also the enemies of Italy—and Italy, Fascist or not, was my country, after all. On the other hand, my experience as conspirator and soldier was nil. I was not prepared to fight, shoot, kill; no one had taught me—these actions were far removed from anything I had done or thought until then. But then I met other young people, scarcely more experienced than I but more determined. We had few weapons, no money, and hardly any contacts with organized, experienced groups, yet we declared ourselves partisans in pectore. We would find weapons and money, too, and experience we would gain through action.

  In wartime, inexperience and imprudence cost dearly. In the valley people were talking about our small group much more than we deserved. Clearly the Fascists of the newborn republic must have overestimated us, since some three hundred of them came looking for us, while we were only eleven, and practically unarmed. We did not even try to defend ourselves, and my story as a partisan ended prematurely on a hillside buried by the first winter snow. From there, I was taken prisoner to Aosta, and from Aosta, identified as a Jew, to the Lager in Auschwitz.

  La Stampa, September 9, 1983

  Remembrance of a Righteous Man

  I would like to contribute to the memory of a man who was close to me for a long time, who shared my harshest experiences, who helped many and sought help from few, who once saved my life, and who died in silence a few days ago, aged eighty-five. He was a doctor. Over the half century of his practice, his patients must have numbered in the thousands. They all remember him with gratitude and fondness, as you do someone who does his best to help you, without self-importance and without intrusiveness, but who sympathizes fully with your problems (not just those related to health), to help you overcome them.

  He was not handsome, but was cheerfully aware of the fact that his ugliness was charming. He made the most of it, as a comedian would a mask. He had a large, crooked nose, big bushy blond eyebrows, and, between nose and eyebrows, bright, sky blue eyes, never sad, almost childlike. In recent years he had become deaf, but this did not bother him at all. Even before that, he had his own way of joining a conversation. If it interested him, he would take part with tact and common sense, never raising his voice (which had been feeble and quivering since the time of his youth, anyway). If the conversation did not interest him, or ceased to interest him, he would become visibly distracted, without even trying to hide it. He would withdraw into his shell like a turtle, leaf through a book, gaze at the ceiling, or wander around the room as if he were alone.

  He was never distracted—in fact, he was extremely attentive—with his patients. On the other hand, his absentmindedness during vacations was legendary, and he would tell about his misadventures afterward with pride. Indeed, he often boasted about his weaknesses, which were few, and never about his virtues, which were patience, love, and a quiet courage. Fragile in appearance, he possessed an unusual strength of character that manifested itself through endurance rather than through action and was a precious gift to those near him.

  I do not know much about him before 1943; thereafter he did not have a happy life. He was Jewish, and in the fall of that year, to avoid capture by the Germans, he had tried to cross into Switzerland with a large group of relatives. They all made it across the border, but the Swiss guards were inflexible and allowed only old people, children, and their parents to enter. The others were taken back to the Italian border: in fact, into Fascist and German hands. He and I met in the Italian transit camp of Fòssoli, were deported together, and from then on were not separated until we returned to Italy, in October 1945.

  His wife, who was kind, defenseless, and always ready, like him, to defend others, was killed immediately upon entering the Lager. He had identified himself as a doctor, but he didn’t know German, so he had to share our common destiny: to toil in the mud and the snow, push wagons, shovel coal, dirt, and gravel. It was crushing work for anybody; for him, physically weak, out of shape, and no longer young, it was deadly. After a few days at the worksite, his shoes damaged his feet, they swelled up, and he had to be admitted to the infirmary.

  There the SS doctors carried out frequent inspections. They would judge him unfit for work and add his name to the list of those to be gassed. Then, by the skin of his teeth, he would be saved by the intervention of his colleagues in charge, the French or Polish prisoner-doctors at the infirmary. Four times they managed to have his name taken off the list. In the intervals between the convictions and the temporary acquittals he continued to be himself: fragile but not spoiled by the inhumanity of the Lager, gently and serenely aware, friendly with everybody, incapable of rancor, without anguish or fear.

  W
e were liberated together; together we traveled for thousands of kilometers in faraway lands. During this endless and indescribable journey as well, his kind and indomitable personality, his contagious capacity for hope, and his zeal as a doctor without medicine were invaluable not only to us, the few Auschwitz survivors, but to a thousand other Italians, men and women, on the uncertain road of return from exile.

  Finally back in Turin, he distinguished himself among all the survivors by his steadfast commitment to the network of support among his fellow prisoners, even those who were far away, even foreigners. Since then, for almost forty years, he had lived a life that only a man like him could have built for himself. With no immediate family, yet in fact surrounded by myriad friends, old and new, all of whom felt indebted to him for something: many for their health, others for a wise piece of advice, others simply for his presence, and for his smile, which was childlike but never oblivious or pained, and which made our hearts lighter.

  La Stampa, October 21, 1983 (remembrance written on

  the occasion of the death of Leonardo De Benedetti)

  Leonardo De Benedetti

  On October 16, Dr. Leonardo De Benedetti died suddenly in the Jewish nursing home where he had been living for many years. He was eighty-five years old; a former district doctor in Rivoli, he was arrested in 1943 while trying to leave the country and deported to Auschwitz, where he lost his wife. In the Lager, his abilities as a medical doctor were not recognized; he spent almost a year there, enduring hunger, cold, exhaustion, and alienation with an unusual serenity and strength of mind that spread to anyone who happened to talk to him. Freed in January 1945 by the Soviet Army, he was given the task of organizing an infirmary in the transit camp of Katowice. The means were scant, but his zeal was great, and the news of the Italian doctor who listened to everyone and treated everyone free of charge spread far and wide, so that it was not just former Italian prisoners who came to him but also other former prisoners, many Polish citizens, and even some Soviet soldiers.

  After a long and adventurous journey back home, he settled in Turin and resumed his practice. His patience, experience, and humanity were such that every client soon became his friend and turned to him for advice and assistance. He did not like solitude, and lived first with some relatives, then with a family of friends, Dr. Arrigo Vita and his two sisters. They passed away, one by one, and Dr. De Benedetti was left alone again. Until he turned eighty, when he retired from his profession, he was the diligent and highly appreciated doctor in the nursing home, where he had decided to settle with the serene resignation of those who know they have not lived in vain. But he was never alone there. Every day until his last, he received visits and invitations from loving relatives, from friends, colleagues, and fellow prisoners. He also received a lot of mail, even from faraway countries, because those who had known him did not forget him, and he answered them all, even the annoying ones, with scrupulous care.

  Last spring, he had some signs of the illness that he ultimately succumbed to. He treated himself with the wisdom of his long experience, and continued to live with a tranquil mind, prudently but fearlessly. Death was sudden and merciful, he didn’t suffer. He was a courageous and gentle man who gave invaluable help to many and never sought help from anyone.

  Ha Keillah, December 1983

  A Mighty River That Sins by Excess

  There’s no doubt about it, I will seize the opportunity and read Les Misérables again, just as, in adulthood, we may revisit a garden or valley of our youth. I read the novel when I was about eighteen, forming a vibrant and dense impression that did not fade as the years went by. That impression was strengthened by a movie version in the thirties that I can’t identify more precisely. I will read the novel again with reverence and with distrust, so to speak, as a negative model, as an example of a kind of writing to be respected but not imitated. I remember and acknowledge its edifying purpose and shining good faith, but I also remember the overflowing course of the book, its lack of restraint, the Manichaeism that deprives characters of humanity and turns them into emblems, the baroque emphasis, the primitive and one-sided psychology.

  In my recollections from that time, it is a book that sins by excess, seizing every opportunity, good and less good, to rise up and take off into digressions and literary raptures: a mighty and turbid river that overflows its banks. At its source, however, is an integrity of life and of writing which is rare today; a culture that is Francocentric but broad and carefully thought out; a love of justice that you feel was paid for with an entire life. No one would write like that now, yet it is a book to which every European is indebted.

  Tuttolibri, December 17, 1983

  Collectors of Tortures

  No exhibit ever seemed to me so clumsy and pointless as this one. Absurdly extended—goodness knows why and until when—it clutters the small building of the esteemed Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin. It is entitled, without pretenses, “Cruel Torture Machines Throughout History.” Not that the exhibition does not keep its promise; the machines are there, authentic or reconstructed, and they are horrible enough. Everything else, however, is exploitative and false.

  False—or rather deceitful—is the tone of the labels; fortunately, they are displayed at bad angles, so that the glare of the lights makes many of them illegible. The tone oscillates between roguish complacency and schoolboy humor; in this context, it sets one’s teeth on edge. Some of the machines built to inflict pain are praised for their “output [sic] in terms of death agonies,” the cat-o’-nine-tails is exalted for its “remarkable merits,” and another kind of whip is called “amusing.”

  It seems to me that we see here the origin of this traveling exhibition: it arose from the joint efforts of a number of Italian and foreign collectors in the field. I confess to a certain distrust of collectors—unless they are motivated by a specific cultural interest, have avowed profit motives, or are under fourteen years old (or the equivalent mental age).

  If none of these conditions are present, a collector is essentially someone who does not know what to do with his time—and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if his curiosity is directed toward weapons or, worse, toward the “atrocious” etc., my distrust deepens. Such a collector can’t but have an esprit mal tourné;1 if he pursues his mania as a private citizen, at home, it is exclusively his business, or at most his psychoanalyst’s. But if he joins forces with his peers and thrusts his goods in our path, then it becomes everybody’s business.

  The cultural gloss of the exhibition is also false. I do not trust the education of those who write “tithe” for “tight,” speak about Catalan guerrillas, say that “the executioner doesn’t give a damn” about the condemned man, mix up informatics with information, and do not know the proper use of the subjunctive. I trust it even less when they simulate a philological rigor that they do not possess and that, on a subject as obscene as torture, would be out of place anyway.

  Equally out of place is the feminist tirade about the male chauvinism of the torturers, and the indignation at the use, past or present, of these devices seems feigned and inauthentic. Those who are truly incensed neither collect nor exhibit them. Rather, they ponder them and try to evoke a time when the criminal, confirmed or presumed, was a condemned man, and therefore deserving of the torments of hell. These machines, ostentatious, redundant, some even decorated, were meant to highlight the theatrical aspect of the punishment and to strengthen faith in and obedience to the earthly or heavenly order by reducing the transgressor from human being to “thing.”

  Here we come to the point. Most false and hypocritical are the alleged reasons for the exhibit. For a crusade against torture, this jumble is more of a handicap than an asset. The resurgence of torture in our century, in the wake of Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes, has little to do with these machines.

  Modern torture, unfortunately present almost everywhere (maybe less in Italy than in other places), has a merely nominal relation to them. It is not theatrical b
ut secretive; it has political rather than theological or cosmic ends; it is, sadly, “rational,” and it must be fought by rational means. It is the highest evil, even worse than the death penalty; it destroys the body of the tortured and the soul of the torturer. But what purpose can this vulgar display of past barbarity serve in driving it away? We can be sure that not one potential torturer will walk out of the exhibition a changed person. Rather, it will only revive that sadistic seed which lies hidden within many among us.

  La Stampa, December 28, 1983

  1. In French in the original: “a dirty mind.”

  The Brute Power

  Death is the one thing

  Fate gave our kind.

  Disdain yourself now, nature, the brute

  hidden power that rules to common harm,

  And the boundless vanity of all.1

  These are the words that Giacomo Leopardi, age thirty-five, addressed to his weary heart in the most desperate of his poems. Not everyone shares this despair, and those who do don’t share it all the time. The infinite vanity of all—which can hardly be questioned—weighs on us only at times of clear-sightedness, and such moments, in a normal life, are not frequent. Besides, if we have the impression (true or false) that our actions are not useless, and that they help to, say, alleviate pain or give pleasure, usually we do not feel unhappy. Further, luckily for us, or our “bright illusion,” there are on this earth dawns, forests, starry skies, friendly faces, and precious encounters, which seem not to be subjected to the brute power.

  Yet this power appears indisputable and evident (in other words, not “hidden”) to anyone who has found himself fighting the old human battle against matter. Those who have done so have been able to observe through their own senses that, if not the universe, at least this planet is governed by a force that is not invincible but perverse, that prefers disorder to order, jumble to purity, a tangle to parallelism, rust to iron, a pile to a wall, and stupidity to reason. Against this power (who has not felt it?), which works also within us, we need defenses. Our main defense is the brain, which must therefore be maintained in good condition, but we also possess lesser defenses, entrusted with simpler tasks, that we share with the lower animals and maybe even plants. We don’t need a brain to sweat when it is hot or to contract our pupils before a glaring light; in fact, these are operations that the brain is incapable of performing.