Primo Levi in 1958 (Part I of II)

My characters meet a second Holocaust survivor-writer

(It’s March 16, 1958. After they’ve met Elie Wiesel, the main character in my new novel We Are Like Fire, and his wife Vera, along with his Cousin Bronwyn — all of whom are from Colorado — visit Primo Levi. Wiesel and Levi are widely considered the two leading voices of conscience to survive and then write about the Holocaust.)

Alessandro and Bronwyn have arranged for us to meet his co-worker, a writer and fellow chemist named Primo Levi. Alessandro is driving us through industrial Turin.  The four of us move along a wide boulevard in a steady stream of traffic. 

We just passed the Fiat automobile factory and we’re riding past columns of chestnut trees.  “How old’s Primo again?” Vera asks Alessandro. 

“38.”

“A year older than Ren,” Vera notes. 

I look at Alessandro.  “This memoir of his from the death camp—”

“—From his year in Auschwitz, Ren.  If This Is a Man.  Published in ’47.  A new edition is being published next year.”

“How’d he end up at Auschwitz?” Vera asks.

“After the fall of Mussolini in ’43, northern Italy was still occupied by Nazis and other Fascists.  Primo joined the resistance when he was 24, and he was captured.”

We pass one apartment building after another till we arrive at an especially large one.  As he parks, Alessandro informs us that “he’s lived here since he was born in 1919”.   

When we arrive at his front door Primo lets us in with a smile.  After greetings all around, he ushers us through his foyer and into his study. 

Primo wears a green summer suit and an outdated watch.  He’s small, frail, mild-mannered, and calm, but behind these appearances, Alessandro has informed us, we’ll find a man of deep moral rigor. 

His study is large and simply furnished.  Primo gestures at the flowered sofa and three of us take our seats.  Alessandro floats down into the comfortable easy chair.  Primo sits at his desk.

We glance across the shelves full of his notebooks and his library of books in Italian, German, and English.  Bronwyn exclaims “delightful!” as we gaze around at varnished copper wire objects each displayed on a wall.  With playfulness and skill, Primo has twisted each one into a shape: a butterfly, an owl, a bug, some kind of warrior bird.  He smiles back at her.

I look at a sketch hanging on the wall – of a half-destroyed barbed wire fence.  “Auschwitz,” he tells me.  I nod slowly.

“My sister’s friends are rather enlightened Quakers, Primo,” Alessandro says.  “I’ve told them about your year as a slave laborer in the rubber plant at Auschwitz.  They’re eager to hear about your experiences.”

Primo nods.  “Where should we start?” 

“Tell us about arriving home,” Alessandro suggests.

Primo nods again.  “I reached here on the nineteenth of October, 1945.  My house was still standing, all my family was alive, no one was expecting me.  I was swollen, bearded, in rags.  I had difficulty making myself recognized. 

“I found my friends full of life, secure in a life of solid daily work and warm meals.  At night I again slept in a large clean bed.  But only after many months did I stop walking with my eyes fixed to the ground.  And the horror has still not ceased to visit me.”

“Thirteen years later,” I observe.  “Why have you chosen to write about it, your experience in the . . .”

“Holocaust,” he says.  “I do not like the term ‘Holocaust’, but I use it reluctantly, to be understood.”

“The Holocaust,” I repeat.

“My narrative impulse was pathological,” he tells us.  “The things I had seen and suffered were burning inside of me.  I felt closer to the dead than the living.  I felt guilty for being a human being, because human beings had built Auschwitz, and Auschwitz had gulped down millions of human beings. 

“I had a torrent of urgent things to tell the civilized world.  Things which it seemed to me ought to shake every human conscience to its very foundation.”

“You chose to bear witness,” I say.

“We the survivors are not the true witnesses,” he replies.  “Those who saw the Gorgon have not returned to tell about it.  They are the submerged, the complete witnesses.”

Alessandro turns somber.  “You showed me your arm once.”

Primo shrugs and gives us a pained smile.  “I’m not ashamed of my souvenir.”  He rolls up his left sleeve to reveal the number on his tanned forearm.  174517. 

We’re all silent for a few moments.

“So sinister,” says Vera. 

“They branded us like cattle,” he says. 

“You must have struggled to convey your experience,” I say.  “The Holocaust seems incomprehensible.”

“Yes, Ren,” he says as he rolls his sleeve back into place.  “Most people live safe in a warm home with hot food, surrounded by friendly faces.  How do you get them to meditate about people who lived without hair and without a name, their eyes empty, with no more strength to remember, fighting for scraps of bread, and then dying because of a yes or a no.”

Bronwyn gasps.  I press my palm to my chest. 

“Imagine a man deprived of everyone he loves and of his house, his habits, his clothes, of everything he possesses.  He will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint.”

Vera shudders.  “Such extreme experiences.”

Primo speaks with a mature awareness, a humane sensibility, a reflective depth.  His tone is equally modest and resolute.

“How could it have happened?” I ask.  “I cannot understand it.  All I know is that since the Holocaust, human consciousness cannot be the same as before.”

When Primo listens he listens attentively.  His whole face fills with a genuine curiosity and an intense focus.

“Incredibly, Ren, an entire civilized people, just issued from the fervid cultural flowering of Weimar, followed a buffoon, obeyed him, sang his praises right up to the end.  When Hitler and Mussolini spoke in public they were believed, applauded, and adored like gods.  The ideas they proclaimed were aberrant and silly and cruel.  And yet they were acclaimed with hosannahs and followed to the death by millions.”

“Adolf Hitler warped German society,” says Alessandro.

Primo looks at his friend.  “It had been driven into the young Nazis’ heads that in the world, there existed only one civilization, the German.  All others, present or past, were acceptable only insofar as they contained some German elements.”

“The Germans thought they were a superior people,” Alessandro says.  “People who had the right to subjugate or eliminate people they thought were inferior.”

Primo nods.  “Were we witnessing the rational development of an inhuman plan?  Or a manifestation of collective madness?  Logical and intentional evil or the absence of logic?  The two coexisted.”

“What about the S.S.?” I ask.  “Were they the most radically evil?”

Primo shakes his head.  “I don’t think so.  The S.S. were made of the same cloth as us.  They were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked.  They were diligent followers and functionaries, some fanatically convinced of the Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient.  All of them had been subjected to terrifying miseducation and were then completed by the S.S. drill.”

“But the S.S. were the worst of the Nazis?” Alessandro asks.

Primo pauses for a few moments.  “Rationality ceased, Alessandro, and the disciples amply surpassed their teachers in the practice of useless cruelty.”

“What was the worst of it?” Alessandro asks.

“The S.S. conscripted Jews to man the ovens.  What were they proclaiming?  ‘We, the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are.  We can destroy not only your bodies but also your souls, just as we have destroyed our own souls.  We have corrupted you.  We have dragged you to the bottom with us.’”

Vera’s mouth falls open.  I smack my hand to my cheek.  “Radical evil.”

“Yes, Ren.  There was no rationality in the Nazi hatred.  It was from outside and beyond humanity.  We cannot understand it.”

Vera bites her lip and nods.  “They did everything they could do to break all of you down.”

Primo nods back at her.  “The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness to collaborate.  I saw it all:  Terror.  Ideological seduction.  Servile imitation of the victor.  Myopic desire for any power whatsoever.  Cowardice.  And lucid calculation aimed at eluding the imposed orders and order.”

Alessandro shakes his head.  “You became more and more diminished.”

“Yes.” 

“How did all of this affect you personally?” Bronwyn asks him.  “How did it affect your psyche, your soul?”

“We lived for months or years at an animal level.  Our days were encumbered from dawn to dusk by hunger, fatigue, cold, fear.  The place made it mandatory that you take care of yourself first of all.  Any space for reflection, reasoning, or experiencing emotions was wiped out.”

“And it wiped out your moral yardstick,” says Alessandro.

“Yes.  We had not only forgotten our country and our culture but also our family, our past, the future we had imagined for ourselves.”

“What was the worst effect on all of you?” I ask.

“Having been diminished so much that we failed at human solidarity.”

I nod.  “How so?”

“The demand for solidarity, for a human word, advice, even just a listening ear, was permanent and universal but rarely satisfied.  There was no time, space, privacy, patience, strength.  Most often, the person to whom the request was addressed found himself in his turn in a state of need, entitled to comfort.  Almost all of us, ever since, have felt guilty for having failed to offer help.”

We sit awhile in silence before Bronwyn picks up the thread.  “Daily life must have been unbearable.”

Primo looks at her and then gets a blank look. 

“Bronwyn,” Alessandro prompts him.

Primo nods and smiles at her.  “Of course.  In the camp, Bronwyn, our state of mind was unstable.  It oscillated from hour to hour between hope and despair.  Nobody can know for how long and under what trials one’s soul can resist before yielding or breaking.  Every human being possesses a reserve of strength whose extent is unknown to him.” 

“How did you endure it?” Vera asks.

“I lived my camp life as rationally as I could.”

“How was that possible?” I ask.

“I had an intense desire to understand – the curiosity of a naturalist transplanted into an environment that is monstrous but new.  Monstrously new.”

“Rationality and a naturalist’s curiosity,” Alessandro muses.  He looks mystified.

“Yes, my friend.  And I lived my Auschwitz year in exceptional spiritedness.”

Vera looks puzzled.  “How?”

“A week after arriving at the camp I grew demoralized.  A prisoner named Steinlauf sternly administered me a complete lesson, never forgotten.  This was the sense that precisely because the death camp was a great machine aiming to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts.  And that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.”

“A good lesson,” says Alessandro.

“A few weeks later Steinlauf went to the gas chamber.  I’ve clung to his words.”

We let that hang in the air awhile before I figure out what to inquire about next.