The Drowned And The Saved - Primo Levi

 THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED - PRIMO LEVI

It's a bright sunny day, the sky is blue and the birds are singing so what better time to read about Auschwitz and the Nazi extermination camps? For is there not always waiting in the wings a would-be tyrant with beautiful words on his lips? Is there not behind every smile a Hiroshima? Does not anyone who has been tortured remain tortured? So it was with Primo Levi who having survived imprisonment at Auschwitz spent the rest of his days wondering why him? Why did he survive and so many did not? How to understand what had happened during the period of the 'millennial Reich' and how to understand how it was allowed to happen? How to make sense of the senseless?

'The pressure that a modern totalitarian state can exercise over the individual is frightful,' writes Levi in The Drowned And The Saved 'Its weapons are substantially three: direct propaganda or propaganda camouflaged as upbringing, instruction and popular culture; the barrier erected against pluralism of information; and terror. Nevertheless, it is not permissible to admit that this pressure is irresistible especially in the brief twelve-year term of the Third Reich, and in the affirmations and exculpations of men responsible for serious crimes." For Primo Levi, the much vaunted explanation of 'only obeying orders' does not wash. It is a lie. To not see the imbalance between this as an explanation and the enormity of pain, suffering and death caused by actions is nothing less than a dereliction and monstrous denial of what it is to be human.

The world, of course, is never black and white, and with an unswerving eye, Levi also looks at 'the grey' and those fellow prisoners of the Nazis who conducted the most horrific labours within the camps: the extraction of the corpses from the gas chambers, the running of the crematoria, the extraction and elimination of the ashes, etc.

'It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness,' Levi writes 'and yet I think it must be done, because what it was possible to perpetrate yesterday can be attempted again tomorrow, can overwhelm ourselves and our children.'

1944 is history but it actually wasn't that long ago and there are vitally important lessons to be learnt and taught. Levi has no hesitation in condemning the perpetrators of Nazism and those involved with the functioning of the death camps and indeed states that it was perfectly right that after being held to account that they be hung, but in regard to those prisoners who worked the gas chambers and the crematoria he accentuates that no-one but no-one is authorised to judge them, not those who lived through the experience of the camps and even less those who did not live through it.

The terrible truth that Levi conveys is that the true, collective and general crime of almost all Germans of that time was that of lacking the courage to speak. That behind those who were directly responsible stood the great majority of Germans 'who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride, the 'beautiful words' of Corporal Hitler.' Both those directly responsible and those who remained silent were all made of the same cloth. They were average human beings, averagely intelligent, and averagely wicked. Save for exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces. They were, for the greater part, 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.

I think the word here is 'enable'. Those who directly and physically supported Hitler enabled his ascent to power then maintained, developed and worked his political machine. Those who looked the other way, through their silence gave their consent and enabled Hitler's power and authority. 'Privilege, by definition, defends and protects privilege,' Levi states, and again this is a truism that cannot be denied. As a foil to this, however, he adds that it is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but which then begs the question: is remaining silent a privilege?

The word 'Fascism' is often too easily flung about and in the process loses some of its meaning. It's not a word that Levi actually uses a lot but if anywhere it's going to be when writing about the Nazi death camps that it's going to be the most applicable. Fascism, however, doesn't start with the death camps - that's where it ends. It doesn't arrive with jackboots and a tank, it arrives in more sensible attire and transport such as a suit and a limousine. It doesn't arrive with a shout and a bang, it arrives in silence.

'We are all in the ghetto, the ghetto is walled in, outside the ghetto reigns the lords of death and close by the train is waiting.' The Drowned And The Saved is an intelligent, reasoned, very gentle but vitally important word of warning. It's a shot across the bows of history and a testimony to the limitless capacity for a person to inflict suffering upon a fellow human being but so too a testimony to the limitless capacity to show love. Primo Levi falls firmly within the latter category.

John Serpico