Write to survive from a reading of "If This Is a Man", excerpts of words on paper thrown away decades ago:
The Holocaust memories and silences
Write to survive.
"Never forget that this has been: I commend these words. Carve them in your heart, When at home, going away, lying down, getting up, repeat them to your children .. ".
So Primo Levi, a chemist from Turin of Jewish origin captured by Fascist militia, began his memorial, an analysis of the history of lager
and at the same time the humiliation, the degradation of man even before the in its final abolition of mass destruction.
January 20, 1942: Adolf Hitler launches the "final solution", the notorious Holocaust
, ordering that the systematic extermination of millions of Jews.
A crime against humanity, extermination planned and legalized degradation physical and moral, total depersonalization of man, the struggle for survival, that was the Shoah
. The resulting path of a millennium, an inherited debilitating anti-Semitism over the centuries and is rooted in the collective consciousness. Years of constant violence, the pain of exile, the ghettos, the mass murders, it reached with the final effect: the conversion of anti-inherited from the past in political ideology.
painful experience that the
lager, which has permanently marked the lives of survivors of those who have seen and felt on their skin, the shame, the shame of the offense and even though the need for men feel beyond any degradation. Impossible to forget, need to remember, to tell what it was, these are the plots which are woven within the mesh of the writing.
A reading of "If This Is a Man" (1947) of P. Levi, two question marks: what writing was for Levi? Levi has never lost himself?
I think the best way to understand just what it is from its literary experience, which is born from the need to tell the world what it was, "my things" as he himself says. If this is a man, they ask us in person reading one of his works. No, it is no longer a man who is forced to obey blindly, to march without missing a step to avoid being hit, not to have hope in tomorrow, to let live. It is no longer a man who is constantly hounded by death, which may come from fatigue, dysentery, from selection, while his being is abbruttisce, losing in that desperate struggle for survival "feelings of humanity." But how can you resist in a situation like that?
Levi answers us telling us to Krauss and the false dream that made him happy, that same dream in which he refused to believe that for a short time and made them less unhappy. And it is imagination Thus, in the dream, that the prisoner attained the strength to go on, buy the dignity of not being overwhelmed. That same dignity Levi led to salvation, so if we could actually call it: how you can actually forget?
Perhaps writing could be for him, as it has been for many survivors, the source of liberation, redemption, a way to overcome those bad moments, to go beyond words, the appendix to the book we read: "I wrote the book just I'm back in a few months, so those memories burned into me .. "a 'statement this strong, which leads one to think. Between the pages of If This Is a Man a reality show hard hard to forget, but what more than anything else strikes me reader, is the way in which the author sets the story. More than once I found myself puzzled by the lucidity with which he deals with the narrative, the description of the camp, prisoners of devices used by consumers to continue to survive (see "this side of good and evil"), classification which is submerged in and saved, everything is plumbed with the highest rationality is disarming as through the writing will be able to relive all for the second time .. "Now imagine a man who, along with their loved ones, are taken from his house, his habits, his clothes, everything finally literally has everything: it will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and insight, as it happens easily, those who have lost everything, to lose himself .. ", and Levi, now I wonder, Levi has never lost himself during and after the hell?
To answer this question with greater certainty, I believe we need a comparison, someone who in the hell has really lost himself: Ka-tzetnik 135,633, this is his name, or so called himself since He had returned from that hell, and that his testimony during the Eichmann trial (hearing 68, Jerusalem, June 7, 1961) that I'm here to propose alla vostra attenzione.
Dal processo Eichmann:
“Procuratore generale: Per quale motivo, signor De-Nur, nelle sue opere ha nascosto la sua identità dietro lo pseudonimo “Ka-tzetnik”
De -Nur: Non è uno pseudonimo, non mi considero uno scrittore o un autore di materiale letterario. È una cronaca del pianeta Auschwitz. Vi sono rimasto per quasi due anni. Lì il tempo non ha la stessa unità di misura che ha sulla terra [..]. Gli abitanti di quel pianeta non avevano un nome, non avevano genitori e nemmeno figli. Non si vestivano nello stesso modo come si fa qui sulla terra. Non erano nati lì e non procreavano. Respiravano in accordo con delle leggi naturali diverse. Non vivevano - e neppure died - according to the laws of this world. Their name was Ka-tzetnik No. .. "(Audience 68, 1961).
When the judges asked him if he, Yehiel De-Nur, were Ka-tzetnik, fell to the ground unconscious. When I read his testimony will not deny I was impressed, I thought that if I read one of his works, comparing his experience with that of Primo Levi would be able to find an answer to my question. Shiva is the witness of a man who knocked at the gates of hell to find out the meaning of what he had lived many years before, in the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Written ten years after the therapeutic experience based on LSD in the Netherlands together with prof. Bastiaans, the psychiatrist who first studied the "concentration camp syndrome," the story of Shiva and awareness, and once back in Israel it will begin drawing up "on their ashes I promised that I would be their voice, and when I left Auschwitz, had come away with me .. ". They will spend ten years between writing and psychotherapy sessions; Dr. Bastiaans say: "I have come here from the patient, but because I knew that she holds the key to a gate for a long time I'm trying to cross. So could you please let me in that gate, but once inside, courtesy of wanting to leave there, alone. "
That same gate è stato più volte varcato da Primo Levi, con la lucidità di chi non ha paura a varcare le porte dell’anima; sono fermamente convinta, adesso più che mai dopo le letture fatte in quest’ultimi giorni, del fatto che Levi, non avesse perso se stesso, nonostante tutto; il lavoro come chimico al laboratorio, il contatto con Lorenzo, un civile che lo aiutò durante gli anni di prigionia, il rapporto umano con Alberto, gli permisero di non dimenticare la sua umanità. È il dopo quello che mi lascia perplessa. Cosa è successo dopo? Dal 1947 al 1987 l’autore scrive senza sosta, lui stesso dirà: “scrivo quello che non saprei dire a nessuno..”. Questo bisogno di voler raccontare agli altri, di voler capire quello che è stato, è così forte da spingerlo a varcare più volte le soglie di quel cancello, la cui scritta
arbeit macht frei lo tormentò più volte nei suoi sogni, come l’autore stesso dirà.
Chissà, forse anche lui, alla fine è rimasto intrappolato dai suoi stessi ricordi, vittima consapevole di quella sua necessità a voler razionalizzare quanto la memoria riportava alla luce.. ma credo che questo non potremmo mai saperlo.
Ebbene, proprio lui che aveva lottato con tutte le sue forze per vivere, per non essere un “sommerso”, alla fine non ce l’ha fatta.
La shoah, un dolore troppo grande per essere attutito dai ricordi. Rimbombano forti Levi's words about it: ".. because [..] no one could ever understand us better than the incurable nature of the offense, it is foolish to think that the extinction of human justice. It [..] breaks my body and soul [..] perpetuates itself as hatred for survivors, and swarms in many ways, [..] as a moral failure, such as denial, as weariness, as renunciation .. "
[1 ] .
Eventually he just gave up ... was April 11, 1987.
of him there is his witness, his wish to encourage all to know, to judge, not to forget, so that this sad story is a ransom paid for future generations, which should never do or suffer the same. About the causes of his death, much has been said, many people think of suicide, in a few ill, one thing is for certain, Levi did not or could not forget.
From The Truce:
".. now we have found the home, our belly is full, we finished telling. It's time. Soon we will hear again the foreign command: "wstawac" (January 11, 1946).
Gisella Meli
References
L. Primo, If This Is a Man, Einaudi Editore, 2005. For the testimony of
Yahiel De-Nur, please go to:
http://www.albertomelis.it/ebraica.scrittori.israeliani.ka.htm
[1] Da La Tregua di Primo Levi, Einaudi Editore.
Cities and eyes. 2. 
Saturday 4 October 2008, at 10:00 
decide to begin the route. From the mouth, there to S. Erasmus, a fisherman on the bank that is intent on his sport has always been a feast for the eyes, the little port of St. Erasmus, Cove, Monte Pellegrino, there on the bottom, the undisputed master. The water is clear, we mirror inside me, I did well not to leave, I will continue the journey along the river, to hell with the tram, now you go on foot! 
soon begins to replenish the river, for a moment there is a strong temptation to sit at a bar and order a hot chocolate, give up, the desire to continue the journey is so great, I want to get to the bottom, far as the eye allows me to go. Under the bridge of the "severed heads," name was never mentioned so much to remember the small triangular pyramid masonry where they were hung as a warning passers-by, the heads of those condemned to death, a man plays his accordion surrounded by passers-by. The lawn is still full of heavy rain the night, but children playing happily, regardless of humidity, will be approximately the 12:00 hasten the pace, hoping to find the church of Madonna delle Grazie open, that's where I want to go .. to make money, it seems that both a church of the eighteenth century, at least these are the little information I can remember, the Roman Baroque, two towers on the outside, ornamental plaster inside, I've never seen it, I hope to arrive in time. Already 
What a strange day today, yesterday it planned to take a trip to the markets of Palermo, now the sky is black, maybe it will rain, yet the desire remains .. so why not go, why not try? 
la pioggia e tornerà il sole, ma la speranza è presto vana, e bagnati ormai, continuiamo il percorso per i vicoli della nostra città. Un uomo avanti con gli anni ci indica una chiesa, “andate, ne vale la pena”, penserà che siamo dei turisti, noi, che con la nostra macchina fotografica gironzoliamo, guardandoci intorno con aria spaesata, con l’aria di chi giunge in questi posti per la prima volta.. eppure siamo di Palermo, questa è la nostra città. 
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