Surviving the Holocaust: Jean Améry and Primo Levi

by

Livia Pavelescu

A thesis submitted to the Department of German Language and Literature in confonnity with the requirements for

the degree of Master of Arts

Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada

August 2000

Copyright OLivia Pavelescu, 2000

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Abstract

This study is predicated on the assumption that there is a culture of the Holocaust in

Austria and Itaiy and that its strongest manifestation is the literahire of the Holocaust.

The purpose of this thesis is twofold. First it detemiines a representative spectnun of

reaction to the Holocaust by using two texts Se questo è un uomo (Sumival in Auschwitz)

and Jemeits von Schuld und Sühne (At the MNld'S Limits) of two prominent writen,

Primo Levi and Jean Améry. Secondly, the text-based analysis that forms the core of the

thesis is grounded and tied to the histoncal context of the Austrian and Italian Jewry that

1 present in the second chapter of the manuscript.

The discussion that follows tracks two representative Jewish Holocaust sumivors,

one Italian and one Austnan. Primo Levi's Holocaust work is analyzed not so much for

its ethical implication or moral importance but for the ways in which Levi was able to

craft a significant rhetoric of the Holocaust. Jean Améry's work is treated not only for the

position of the intellechial in Auschwitz but also for his problematic feelings of

confusion, narnely the necessity and impossibility of being a Jew.

Though Levi and Amery are quite distinct in terms of üterary abilities and

purposes in writing, their trauma is presented as a survivofs memoir. The final segment

of this thesis compares the texts by the two authors in detail, while a bnef conclusion

situates Améry and Levi within the broader context of Holocaust stuvival memoirs.

Acknowledgemen ts

1 would like to thank my two SupeMsors Dr. Ulrich Scheck and Dr. Donato Santeramo

for their helpful support during the program at Queen's University and especially during

tie time while 1 was writing my thesis. 1 would also like to express my thankfulness to

them for making it possible for me to go abroad to do my research.

1 owe thanks to the German Department of Queen's University for the financial

support I have received during my years at Queen's University.

There are niends to thank in Montreal: Monica and Martin for their support and

expert advice with my thesis.

This has been an exhausting thesis to write. Fominately my husband Giuseppe's

patience, like his great encouragement, seems boundless. 1 am lovingly grateful for

everything. Lastly, 1 also acknowledge the support I received fiom my parents.

TabIe of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Historical Considerations

2.1 From Hitler and the Jewish Question to Auschwitz 2.2 A Bnef History of Events: The Jews in Austria and Italy 2.3 Austria 2.4 ItaIy 2.5 Memory

3. Primo Levi: Se questo è un tiomo (Survivd in Auschwitz)

4. Jean Améry: Jenseiis von Schuld und Sühne (Ai the Mind's Limirs)

5 . Differences and Sirnilarities: Primo Levi & Jean Améry

6. Conclusion

7. Appendix

Works Cited

Vita

1. Introduction

The Holocaust theme, informed by ineradicable motifs and unparalleled contemporary

relevance, is still very much alive in current film, Song and literature. Both the cultural

and political debates on the Second World War in general and the continuing

cornparisons with current historical events have decisively contributed to the re-

emergence of the Holocaust theme. ' At the same time the vast production of texts,

whether prose, poetry or drama, has played an extremely importarit role in keeping the

tragedy of the Holocaust alive today. In particular, works which have been published by

survivon, inhabitants of Germany and of its Geman-speaking occupied territories and

survivon from Italy. have borne witness to the continuing relevance and ramifications of

these tragic events. The writings created in these countries are far from being one and the

same. In fact, we are confionted with a wide range of approaches, techniques and styles

that diversely recount the Holocaust expenence. Significantly, among these writers there

are radical differences other than those generated linguistically through the various

languages employed. These are apparent first in the locale of the experience, secondly in

its rendering, and finally, in how the various authors have dealt with its traurnatizing

aftennath. In this sense, Jean Améry and Primo Levi can be considered emblematic

writers of the Holocaust as they both experienced the atrocities at Auschwitz first-hand.

Yet, at the same time, even though the descriptions of the crimes cornrnitted at

Auschwitz are clearly not identical, the NO authors are nonetheless closely paraileled in

their wrihngs. They put forward two distinct and at t h e s radically divergent ways of

1 For example, one could point to the recent genocide attempts in various parts of

coping with their Holocawt experience. The N o authors also differ on how to ensure

that one never brget the attempt to exterminate the Jewish race. Analyzing and

cornparhg the works of Jean Améry and Primo Levi shed some light on the Auschwitz

experience in generai and on the important yet different roles they assurned in making

certain that their own survivai of the Holocaust was not in vain.

In recent years the focus on the Holocaust has become obscured by competing

fields of interest. Such ancillary topics that tend to blur the discussion are. for example.

the question of Palestine and Israel, or the equation of the Holocaust with nurnerous

other histoncal atrocities. These topics are ofien introduced at the expense of an analysis

of or focus on the victims of the Holocaust. This response has concemed many survivors,

but perhaps none has expressed his disrnay so publicly as Jean Arnéry. As an Auschwitz

survivor and post-Holocaust philosopher, he recognized already earl y in the sixties the

implications of linking the Holocaust to a contemporary agenda (bfind's Lhi ts , viii-ix).

Améry consequently identifies what should be the crucial issue in any discussion

regarding the Holocaust: namely, how to give testimony and how to bear witness.

Likewise Primo Levi's desire to remember, conceived in terms of its future importance,

is also the impetus behhd al1 of his texts. He is compelled to remember because memory

has inscribed on him the details not only of Jewish victimization but also of Jewish

resilience and swvival.

An exclusively Holocaust culture continually fimis expression in film, Song,

literature and politics. it keeps r edac ing in current debates over historical and

contemporary events, and the vast literature of the Holocaust in German-speaking

the world, Le., Kosovo, Ruwanda and East Timor-

countries and in Itaiy constitutes an essential element of our history. Regardless of

whether these Iiterary texts have received extensive attention or barely any at d l , they

aptly offer a wide range of contrasting styles to convey the experiences of those who

have lived through the most appalling genocide of the twentieth century.

I began this work to determine the effects of the Holocaust on survivon, not only

because I share a particular interest in Jewish history, but also because I felt a particular

sympathy and curiosity for the sumivon themselves. This compelling personal interest

reinforced my sense that 1 could try to undentand something of what is at stake in

Holocaust testimony. 1 consequently began to examine how the victirns perceived

themselves in relation to their experiences.

The reason for choosing Améry and Levi as authon of the Holocaust is simple

enough. Although originating from different countries and different backgrounds, they

are both Iinked through their internent in Auschwitz. By observing and comparing their

accounts, and through exarnining their lives and deaths, I shall attempt to reconstruct

their Auschwitz experience and show how this has transformed their lives into a Iegacy

on how to survive and bear witness.

"Surviving the Holocaust: Jean Arnéry and Primo Levi" concentrates on these

two Jewish writers who have survived. The opening chapter contains historical

considerations that will attempt to account for the significance of Holocaust mernoin. It

lays the groundwork for a generai understanding of Jewish life and culture in Austria and

in Italy. Secondly, I will look in detail at Primo Levi, whose Holocaust related work Se

qziesto è un uomo (Sumival in Awchwitz) is examined not so much for its ethical or

moral implications but for the ways in which Levi was able to shape a uniquely Italian

perspective on the Holocaust. Améry's theoretical work Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne

(At the Mind's Limits) provides the centerpiece for chapter four. Here, 1 shall analyze not

only the position of the intellectual in Auschwitz but also the entire set of pmblems

Améry felt compelled to confiont during his life after the liberation: namely, the

simultaneous necessity and impossibility of considering himself a Jew. The final segment

will deal with both authon h m a comparative point of view, using the works discussed

in the second and third chapten as reference points. 1 shall compare how the two authors

deal with their Holocaust experience and discuss the similarities and differences of their

memoin. A brief conclusion will complete the thesis.

2. Eistorical Considerations

The terni "Holocaust" has been heard again and again throughout the past fifty yean.

This is the word by which people invariably refer to cataclysmic events in Germany from

1933 to 1945. Two Hebrew words, Churban and Shoah, are cornrnonly used to designate

the Holocaust. Both sipiQ catastrophic destruction. According to Une1 Tal, the term

Shoah appeared among Polish Jews as early as 1940 to express their plight under Hitler

(Tal. 9). Its roots cm, however, be traced al1 the way back to its Biblical origins. The

Psalms, Isaiah's prophecies, and Job's lamentations al1 refer to Shouh. It has multiple

meanings: sometimes it voices the specific dangers that threatened Israel from

surrounding nations. and at other times it serves as a waming in cases of individual

distress and desolation. Although catastrophic destruction is signified in each case, Ta1

argues "al1 Biblical meanings of the term Shoah clearly imply Divine judgment and

retnbution" (Tal, 10-1 1). However, the Final Solution calls into question such Biblical

meanings. In contemporary usage, Shoah unmistakably conveys the old sense of

annihilation, but additionally carries a profound element of doubt and even despair where

religious tradition is concemed.

While Hitler's genocide was under way, the Jewish victims sensed catastrophe

when it was already too late: Shoah was happening. Both terms Final Solution and Shoah

are better known as the Holocaust. A contemporary dictionary will define the word

'Holocaust" as a great or total destruction by fire, and the word derives Eom the Greek

holokaustos. meanhg "burnt whole" (Webster, 495). In the Septuagint, the Greek

translation of the Jewish Scripture, hofokauston serves as a substitute for the Hebrew

olah, which literally means "what is brought up" (Rubenstein, 8). Contextually the term

conveys the notion of sacrifice, one specifically carried out through "an offering made by

fire unto the Lord" (Rubenstein, 9). Following World War II, Israelis spoke of Shoah ve'

gewrah (Rubenstein, LU), equating Holocaust and heroism. More recently, Shoah has

been used to signiQ a whirlwind of destruction (Rubenstein, 1 1). However, the word

Holocaurt became synonymous with the events of 1933 to 1945.

The Holocaust is defined largely by the stories that are told about it. Whether

factual or fictional, historically documented or syrnbolically expressed, such narratives

are a necessary ingredient to explore the Holocaust as both Final Solution and as human

tragedy .

2.1 From Hitler and the Jewish Question to Auschwitz

Let us first consider that Bismarck's creation of a unified German empire in 1 87 1

would eventually lead to a decade of economic depression. These conditions had already

exacerbated tensions in Germany and Austria between Jews and non-Jews. To add to the

existing strife, large nurnben of Jews fkom the East immigrated to Berlin, Vienna, and

other major cities (Gilbert, 1 1 5). In 1 89 1, Leo von Caprivi, then chancellor of the

Geman Reich, observed, "Gerrnany must export goods or people" (Ryder, 40). Caprivi

undentood the classic dilemma of production and conswnption that besets every modem

society, for Gemany's ability to produce exceeded her capacity to consume. Without

Foreign markets, the country would inevitably encounter an unacceptable level of mass

unemployment at home. Over the long nm such destabilization could not be tolerated.

When he was only eighteen years old, Hitler headed for Vienna to make his way

in the world only io see his hopes dashed. Denied admission to the Vienna Acaderny of

Fine Arts, he also lost his beloved mother (who had been attended by a Jewish physician)

to cancer in December 1908 (Feig, 20). Five years of ernbittered restlessness in Viema

ensued. Hitler observed the Jewish population, now swelled by unassimilated eastem

arrivals. They stmck him as alien in every way. Later he would identiQ their presence as

a major factor in forcing Germans out of a place in the Sun that was rightfully thein

(Baynes, 1079).

In February 19 14, when he was called up for examination by the military

services, Hitler was rejected as being too weak and unfit for action. But, only a few

months later, when war broke out in August, he volunteered and was accepted for service

in a Bavarian infmtry regiment. In October 19 1 8 he was badly gassed. By the time he

had recovered, Germany had surrendered. Along with most other Germans, Hitler was

stunned by the capitulation. The war had given his life a purpose, and its ending seemed

to Iead to an even more desperate collapse of his hopes. Hitler's hatred of the Jews

intensified in postwar Munich, the city that had already given birth to National

Socialism. Once here. for example, he witnessed a series of politically naive events that

he perceived as lefi-wing Jewish attempts to b ~ g about an enduring socialist revolution

in conservative, Catholic Bavaria. They inevitably failed but not without leaving a lasting

impression on Hitler.

Still in the m y , he was assigned to investigzte radical political activity. This

task put hirn in contact with the DAP (Deutsche Arbeitspartei), whose ideas coincided

with many of his own, and Hitler consequently became member Number 55 in

September 1919. It did not take long for him to climb his way up to an executive

committee position. Within two years, he was in charge of the organization. Capitalizing

on his powerful rhetorical talents, the renamed National Socialist German Workers' Party

gradually caused Munich to take notice. On November 8, 1923, Hitler used a

combination of persuasion and force to get influential political and military leaders in

Munich to back his attempt to seize power fiom a Weimar Republic he perceived to be in

a state of near collapse. This plan resulted in disaster. Sentenced to five yean in prison,

he employed his time in jail to write Mein Karnpf; one of the most infarnous political

tracts of the 20th century.

In Mein Kumpj; Hitler contends that nature's basic law dernands etemal struggle

in which conflict is the means to greatness. Furthemore, he discovered two other natural

laws that he regarded as vitally important.

These he called the laws of heredity and self-preservation (Hitler, 23). Nature preserves

the strong at the expense of the weak. Human life is not exempt fiom nature's ruthless

process, since in a Darwinian scheme of natural selection, nature predestines the

strongest for life. Hitler also believed that a people's survival and rnovement toward

excellence depend on geography. Suficient land is essential for a vital people and

intrinsic to the purity of its way of life. To achieve greatness and the space this requires,

brutally efficient methods are often necessary (Hitler, 30).

These aspects of Hitler's view of the world and his anti-Semitisrn are not far

apart. in fact, nature and history are al l of a piece (Hitler, 15). Eariy on he was driven by

the conviction that racial pollution threatened human existence and the racially supenor

German people. Thus, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavic nations, as well as

physically and mentally irnpaired Germans or other undesirables, would become Hitler's

chosen targets. Foremost on this list, however, was the racial enemy Hitler regarded as

the most unrelenting of all: the Jews. Following Hitler's lead, propaganda portrayed the

Jews in three fundamental ways: as international anti-German conspirators, as cnminals,

and as a life-threatening pestilence. Jews subverted and plundered the very people who

deserved to dominate the world. Once and for al1 Germans must rise to this challenge.

Under his leadership, Hitler believed he could organize the Nazis to provide the requisite

force.

The reasons why Germans joined the Nazi party or eventually voted for Hitler

were diverse in nature. Both party members and their grass-roots support came from al1

ciasses. Nazism attracted them because it took a strong stand against communisrn, while

other parties were not perceived to promote the German people's respective economic

and political interests which the Nazis promised to address. It must be pointed out that

Hitler's popularity did not increase primarily because of his anti-Sernitism. According to

Sarah Gordon, "Middle-class and other voters did not vote for Hitler because he

promised to exterminate European Jewry. Neither did they vote for him because he

promised to tear up the constitution, impose a police state, destroy trade unions, eradicate

rival political parties, or cripple the churches" (Gordon, 83-84). The reason they voted

for him was because he had promised to restore Gemany to its former greatness. Yet

when h e took office, these are exactly the things Hitler went on to do. in Mein Kampf he

declared that the German Reich as a state must embrace al1 Germans and has the task,

not only of assembling and presenring the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements

in this people, but slowly and surely of raising the Volk to a dominant position (Hitler,

398). irnplicit in these views was the need for additional Lebensram in which the

enlarged Geman Volksgerneinschaft, an ethnicdly and culturdly hornogeneous

community devoid of al1 dissonant others, could flex its muscles, secure in its conviction

that there was enough room for al1 who belonged and none at al1 for those who did not.

On March 23, 1933 Hitler had, by a policy of deceit and false assurances,

obtained a majority in the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act, a law authorizing the

govemment to issue legislation on its own responsibility even if that legislation deviated

fkom the Reich Constitution. Therefore, the decrees which were promulgated by the

Geman government, and known as the Nuremberg laws, adhered to the principles of

National Socialist ideology rather than the rules orthe law.

Early attempts to derme those who did not belong to the German race entailed the

coining of the expression "nicht von der dewschen Rasse. " Intended to target Jews

exclusively, the crucial regdation of A p d 1 1, 1933 defined a "non-Aryan" as a penon

who had a Jewish parent or a Jewish grandparent. Still, both the category and its

definition were too imprecise (Hitler, 26). Jew was the specific designation that had to be

stressed, but not until 1935 was the legal definition sharply focused. That description

labeled as Jewish anyone who had at l e s t three full generations of Jewish grandparents.

The legislation also included penons with two full generations of Jewish grandparents as

well as any of the following cases: belonging to the Jewish religious community as of

September 15, 1935 or joining thereafter; being married to a Jew at that date or later;

being bom fkom a marriage contracted after September 15, 1935 in which at least one

parmer was a full or three-quarter Jew; or being bom after July 3 1, 1936 as the

illegitimate offspring of extramarital relations involving a full or three-quarter lew. The

intent of these decrees was ineluctably to decide their targefs' status and fate. The criteria,

however, did not cover everyone who possessed Jewish blood. Thus, further calculations

were needed to classi@ the Mischlinge. In surn, Mischlinge of the first degree were

defined as pesons descended from two Jewish grandparents, with neifher belonging to

the Jewish religion nor manied to a Jew on September 15, 1935 or thereafier (Gordon,

39). Mischlinge of the second degree could count one Jewish grandparent. With some

variations, these basic definitions prevailed in the German occupied countries and Axis

states. Mischlinge were subject to discrimination, but they were at less risk than those

classified as full Jews (Gordon, 29). Legislative measures against German Jews proved

less effective than the Nazis had hoped. The bureaucratic phase of the Nazis' anti-lewish

campaign put German Jews under duress by severing social contacts between Jews and

Germans. This was effected through imposing restrictions on housing, movement, and

work, creating identification measures, and establishing Jewish administrative

mechanisms for helping to carry out the various decrees. Nonetheless, these steps did not

prove suffcient to produce the Holocaust. Had the Nuremberg Laws constituted the

zenith of the legislative phase, the enfiorcement of such decrees and the others that came

before and after would not have eradicated Jewish communities in Germany. Hitler and

the Nazi leadership became aware that these rneasures lefi them far fiom their professed

goals of making German Life judenrein (Rubenstein, 145). Thus, even as the Nazis used

law against the Jews, it proved to be a double-edged sword. If law kept order and spiked

the hostility spawned by random violence, it also constrahed the Nazis. By itself, law

offered no Final Solution,

From the Geman invasion of Poland in September 1939 through the subsequent

conquest of virtually the entire European continent, special directives conceming the

Jews were issued by the SS, to whom Hitler had confided the handling of the Final

Solution. For example "the documents, which eventually fell into Allied hands, indicate

clearly that as early as 1939 the SS was making rnurder plans. An order issued by

Reinhard Heydnch, the SS oficer in charge, to the heads of his Ehsatzgruppen three

weeks after the invasion of Poland outlined the ghettoization that was to be the fint

phase of the Holocaust" (Rabinowitz, 13). As a consequence, Jews were to be gathered

into concentration camps in order to facilitate the subsequent measures. The meaning of

these instructions became clear at a conference of hi& state and SS oficials held in

Wamsee, a Berlin suburb, on January 2 4 1942 when the death camps were already

under construction or cqmpleted. The purpose of the meeting was to coordinate the role

of the various government agencies in the Final Solution. Eventually, emigration was to

be replaced by the evacuation of Jews to the East, and thereafter to the newly established

death camps (Ryder, 49).

Auschwitz-Birkenau eventually becarne the core of the Holocaust, and the

symbol of al1 the camps. At Auschwitz, the largest killing center, "the magnitude of

death was equivalent of one death per minute, day and night, for a period of three years"

(Rubenstein, 145). In spite of that staggenng rate of killing, Auschwitz was not mainly a

death camp. In addition to its centra: extermination center, Auschwitz-Birkenau, it

included, for example, Auschwitz-Monowitz, an industrial installation operated by slave

labor working in the synthetic rubber manufacturing works of 1. G. Farben, the huge

German petrochernical conglomerate. As Rubenstein points out, the conditions under

which the inmates were kept at Auschwitz-Monowitz were caiculated to kill most of

them within three months while extracting their last bit of energy (Rubenstein, 48).

Death through labor was the official policy of the camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau brought the rational and orderly extermination of human

beings to a point of efficiency and magnitude unknown in the modem world. Not on!y

was it the largest mass killing center in history, but the numben murdered there exceed

the combined population of severai small European nations (Feig, 1 14). In the record of

what men have done to other men there is simply no equivalent, no place where so many

people have been put to death so quickly. Auschwitz-Birkenau became the most

renowned of al1 the camps. During the war years the immense Auschwitz complex also

became one of the largest Jewish communities in history. "More Jews arrived at

Auschwitz h m al1 over German-occupied Europe, more Jews lived in Auschwitz, more

Iews perished in Auschwitz in a shorter penod of tirne than anywhere else in the world"

(Rosensaft, 53).

2.2 A Brief History of Events: The Jews in Austria and Italy

A concem to reach general conclusions about the profoundly disturbing and destructive

events which took place in Europe between 19 18 and 1945 (particularly in Gemany and

in Itaiy) was precisely what triggered discussions about fascism and nazism. Fascism as a

nibject of theoretical and comparative analysis was largely the product of a M d s t -

inspired debate, in which the relations of capital, labor and the state, and questions of

class, occupied center stage (Bessel, 3 8).

The leaders of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany acknowledged a common origin

and destiny uniting their two regimes. Yet Fascist Italy's last war effort crumbled within

six months of its beginning in June 1940; Greek and British forces inflicted unequivocal

defeats in Albania, the Mediterranean, and in North Africa (Bessel, 57). The Fascist

regime itself then quietly dissolved in 1943 in the bloodless royal and military coup

d'état provoked by the Anglo-Amencan landings in Sicily. As De Grand points out,

Mussolini's fitful resurrection in the Salo republic fiom autumn 1943 onward was far

from bloodless, but rested solely on German power, not on his own strength (De Grand,

29). By contrast, the fienetic outward thnists of Hitler's dictatonhip between 1938 and

1 942 subj ugated almost the entire European continent. Subsequently, German y bitter1 y

resisted the Allied Forces over three yean, and her resistance only disintegrated as

Hitler's suicide released the Gennan people fiom their allegiance.

One major feature that unites the two regimes is nonetheless clear. Mussolini and

Hitler could not ai first simply declare the liquidation of an entire race, narnely the lews.

Their announced alliance of absolute power assurned an ultimate course, which leA little

choice but aggression. War was both a means and an end, for it worked equally well as a

tool for extemal conquest as for the pervasive barbarization of the Geman and Italian

nations. Intemally it spelled the end of al1 pre-established institutions, from synagogues

to the different political parties, with the exception of the Church, that blocked the fascist

regime's path to total victory.

Racism was the central and pervasive theme of Nazi ideology. It shaped social policy in

Germany between 1933 and 1939, and was a major factor in the Nazi strategies executed

during World War iI, infoming Geman policy in occupied countries, and, when carried

to its uitimate conclusion, producing the Holocaust (Bessel, 6 1 ).

The Concentration Camp and the Extermination Camp were the two most

barbaric institutions of the Third Reich. The Extermination Camps served to eliminate

racially undesirable minorities. Many eyewitness accounts and autobiographies have

been written descnbing these institutions in both Italian and German literature, but one

must also pay attention to the ideological build-up pnor to their creation. The extent to

which their legacy ovenhadowed the lives of' the survivors even aRer the war has been

arnply documrnted.

in order to pinpoint the main différences between the political KZ and the

extermination camp, the authority of Jean Améry, the well-known Austnan philosopher,

who experienced both these camps is incontestable. He calls the political KZ's the

"'established camps", since the administration was conducted by the political prisonen

and was designed to benefit the Nazis as much as possible. In contmst, Auschwitz was

established in 1942 for the overriding purpose of eliminating the Jews, and thus bringing

a final and complete solution to the Jewish question in the Geman sphere of idluence

(quot. in Enahi, 59). In the extermination camps, where the majority of inmates were

Jews intemed for sabotage or underground activities, the main responsibility for

administration was in the hands of professional criminais. Auschwitz and its annex,

Birkenau, the location of the five crematoriums, were not meant for permanent

habitations; they were designed to be death factones. Jews were penecuted, not for their

religious beliefs and practices, but because of their so-called racial identity, irrevocably

transmitted through the blood of their grandparmts (Gordon, 34).

Hitler was detemined to expand Geman temtory, through war, if necessary.

Until 1939, however, he was able to expand the Reich's borden without a war.

Temtorial expansion began with the Saarland area bordering on northeastem France,

which had been temporarily severed from Germany following Worid War I (De Grand,

45). In January 1935, a ninety percent majority of Saarland voters favored reunification

with Germany. The following year Hitler rernilitarized the Rhineland in direct violation

of the Treaty of Venailles. In 193 1 he expressed his opinion conceming the Treaty of

Versailles in his correspondence with Chancellor Bruening by saying that he was of the

conviction that without a complete abolition of reparations it was not possible to

conceive any restoration to economic health. The Place Treaty of Versailles was no

Peace Treaty. On the contrary it belonged to the category of those Tribule-Diktats which

bore in themselves the seed of later wars. The demand for the abolition of those clauses

of the Versailles Treaty which reduced the German people both in the sphere of law and

of economics was not oniy their moral will but dso their moral duty (Baynes, 998).

On March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria, receiving a warm welcome

from the native population. The following day Austria was incorponted into the Reich,

fulfilling what Hitler, who h3d been bom in Austria, believed was the destiny of his

native land. Nazi influence in Austria was rampant well before the AmchIt~~s, and a

significant group favored unification with Germany. Soon &er Hitler came to power in

1933, the Austrian chancellor, Engelbert DollfuB, a Christian Socialist, dissolved

parliament and banned ail political parties except his own goveming Fatherland Front.

Nevertheless, the Nazis remained active, and by 1938 the Austian cabinet included Nazi

party leaders. One of hem, Artur von Seyss-Inquart. took his instructions directly fiom

Berlin and actively pnclaimed the union with Gerrnany (Levin, 495).

For Aush-ian Jews, annexation meant doom. Within a year, the Nazis

accomplished what they had not been able to do in five years at home, namely, effect the

total exclusion of the Jews. The speed and efticiency of the Nazi persecution of Austrian

Jews also served as a mode1 for the strategies employed later in the territories conquered

dunng World War D.

In Austria, Nazism found a congenial climate of opinion. A long tradition of

political anti-Semitism paved the way for the Austrian Nazis and their supporters. Many

of the pre-Nazi parties tried to show that they liked the Jews no more than the Nazis.

They exploited anti-Jewish sentiments in business, science, and the arts. The Catholic

Church in Austria, which was always uncornfortable with Jewish "materialism" and

liberalism, remained silent about the anti-Semitism nfe among the various Catholic

political organizations. But it was the practical application of German Nazi notions of

racial anti-Semitism that led to the doom of the Austnan Jewish community (Berenbaum,

89).

At the time of t!ie Anschluss there were 185.000 Jews in the country, of whom

ninety percent lived in Viema (Levin, 429). They had corne to play a significant role in

the Viennese intellectual and cultural life. However, as soon as Germany assumed

power, Jews were physically attacked on the streets of Viema The beards of pious Jews

were forcibly shaved and Jewish women forced to scrub sidewalks. Apartments were

Iooted and during the fint few weeks of the occupation, thousands of Jewish businesses

were taken over. By the summer of 1938, the Nazis had decisively imposed their version

of "Iaw and order" (Berenbaum, 39). Street violence was curbcd, but anti-Semitism took

a much more efficient and ruthless Form. The persecution of Austrian Jews followed the

German pattern: Aryanization of property, segregation, then ernigration. By the sumrner

of 1939, twenty-one thousand Jewish businesses were closed and five thousand

transferred to non-Jewish ownenhip. By the end of 1938, Aryans had taken over sixty

percent of al1 Jewish homes and apartments in Viema. Jews began to leave Austria as

soon as the Nazis entered. By December 1938, sixty-six thousand had emigrated and at

the outbreak of war in September 1939, seventy-five percent of the Jews had fled their

country (Berenbaurn, 44).

German and Austrian Jewish refugees inc luded ordinary people like shopkeepen,

artisans, middle-class professionais, as well as distinguished writers, artists, scholars, and

scientists who epitomized the f l o w e ~ g of German and European culture (Berenbaum,

87). Many had an international reputation in their respective fields. Leaving their

horneland to make a new life in a strange country was often exceedingly diffcult.

Einstein was met wiîh great enthusiasm, but other intellectuals were often treated

shabbily, unable to find work suited to their abilities.

Some of Europe's h e s t artists escaped, including Jean Arp, André Breton, Marc

Chagall, Max Ernst and Henri Matisse. Eminent musicians included Georg Szell and

Bruno Walter. Many established writea came to the United States, arnong them Franz

Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger and Max Brod, the fiend and biographer of Franz Kafka

(Berenbaum, 93). in Viema, S ipund Freud dispatched his disciples around the globe.

Psychoanalysis was no longer d e in the Reich. Analysts trained by Freud fled to

different parts of the world, such as New York, Los Angeles or lerusalem. Freud himself

lefi Vienna for London soon after the Nazis entered Austria.

2.4 Italy

At the time of Primo Levi's birth on July 3 1,19 19 most Italian Jews would have agreed

that in their country there was neither a Jewish problem, nor any explicit antiSemitism

(Wilhelm, 8). Piedmont, the region of Levi's birth, had Iike the rest of Northem Italy

several small Jewish comrnunities. Most of their members, as Mina Ciciomi states, were

of Southern French origin and had come to Piedmont following a wave of successive

expulsions from France in the fourteenth century. Othen had come fiom Spain and

Portugal around the turn of the sixteenth century, after they had been forced to choose

between death, exile and conversion to Catholicism by the law of 1492, proclaimed by

the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews introduced silk technology to

Piedmont and were entirely confined within their ghettoes (Ciciomi, 127). The

community in Turin, capital of Piedmont, included a ghetto, which had been established

in 1679, but remained relatively mal1 until afler1848. In that year Charles Albert, King

of Piedmont and Sardinia, became the fm among the rulen of the many states into

which Italy was then divided to proclaim the emancipation of the Jews, repealing al1

restrictions iimiting their choice of residence or employment. This e ~ c h i s e m e n t ,

combined with the industrialization of Piedmont led to the creation of one of the largest

Jewish communities in M y (Cicioni, 36).

Italian Jews gained additional fkeedom after other States had joined the Kingdom

of ttaly. In 1870, Rome's Jewish ghetto was opened after the Pope withdrew into the

Vatican City, and Rome was proclaimed the national capital. These gestures instilled a

sense of profound loyalty on the part of the Jews to the newly unified Italian nation, and

a desire to become full-fledged members of their new comrnunity. The integration of the

Jewish communities is demonstrated by their distinctive linguistic usage. Italian Jews did

not have a Jewish language such as Yiddish, which prevailed in many countries of

Eastern Europe, but communicated instead in standard Italian when writing, and in the

many regional dialects to which they added a nimber of Hebrew expressions.

Inteption, however, did not mean total assimilation. Religious traditions were

maintained through the celebration of the holidhys. Until World War 1, Jews also tended

to many other Jews, oflen fiom their own region (Berenbaum, 1 12).

The attitudes of Italian Jews towards politics reflected the general outlook of the

Italian people as a whole. Before the nse of Fascism, Jews were either memben of or

sympathized with d l political parties, although the rnajority of politically active Jews

tended to support the left. However, at least five Jews were arnong the hundred and

nineteen Italians who founded the Fasci di combattimento, Mussolini's first national

organization. Some Jewish industrïalists backed and fïnanced the Fascist movement

between 1920 and 1922, white over two hundred Jews took part in the March of Rome,

and a number of Jews even held important positions in the Fascist govemments of the

1920's and 1930's (Berenbaum, 168).

In 1935, the Fascist regirne achieved its greatest m a s consensus and anti-Fascist

activities in Italy were at their lowest ebb. By the mid 1930's the Fascist School

Association directly controlled schools, afler the dismissal or arrest of openly anti-Fascist

teachen. In 193 1, University lectures were ordered to swear allegiance to the regime. It

held a monopoly on radio and cinema, as well as the press. Even those Italians who dared

criticize the regime eventually had no choice but to collaborate. In fact, Levi's own

father became a party member in order not to encounter problems with his business

(Cicioni, 183).

In 1938 La difsa deffa Razx (Defence of Race), part of the anti-Semitic

campaign initiated by the Italian govement, prompted the begiming of the arrests as

part of the rapprochement between Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Gemany. The

campaign constituted an obvious introduction of discnminatory laws in order to bring

Italy into line with the anti-semitic legislation passed in Germany afier 1933 (Levin,

412).

On July 15, 1938 the Italian papers published a Manifesru cflialian Racism

which was subdivided into ten chapters, each stating the new laws for the Jewish

population. Then, on July 29, the Ministry of the Interior ordered the twenty-six Jewish

Communities to hand in copies of their records. These measures, the racial laws, began

on September 12, when Jews were forbidden to study and teach in state and private

schools. On November 26, textbooks written and edited by Jews were banned. Mixed

marriages were forbidden, and Jews were expelled fkom the Fascist party and its

organitations. In fact they were excluded from al1 levels of public administration. The

only Jews exempted from discrimination were those who had acquired exceptional merit

and were chosen case-by-case by a specific cornmittee of the Ministry of the Interior

(Levin, 41 8). AI1 this profoundly shocked Italian Jews who were now excluded Eom full

citizenship, theis by nght for over fi@ years.

Evenis were moving too quickly for the ItaIian people to foresee the extent of the

carnage ahead, or prepare for it fully. On July 25, 1943 the Fascist hierarchs deposed

Mussolini and the King placed him under arrest, and on September 8, the armistice

between Italy and the Allies was made public. By that time the Allies occupied Sicily

and the south of the Italian peninsula. The north and the center were occupied by the

Germans, who, after July 25, started sending troops into Italy, and in September rescued

Mussolini and appointed him head of the new puppet Social Republic of Salo in northern

Italy near Lake Garda (Berenbaum, 68).

For the Italians who found thernselves under Nazi rule, there were only two basic

choices: to wait passively for events to run their course and suppoa the Nazis and the

Fascists or to act against them. The choice presented itself in a far more drarnatic fashion

for the thousands of Jews then living in Italy, as the SS and the Gestapo began to single

out Jews in Rome and in smaller northem communities on the ba is of the registers

drawn up in 1938.

On November 17, 1943 the Italian Social Republic declared al1 Jews to be

'foreigners' and 'enemy nationais' for the period of the war. Two weeks later, the Minister

of interior issued a police order providing for the mest and internment of al1 Jews living

within the Italian Territory and entaihg the confkcation of their entire property. Some

Italian Jews fled, mainly to Switzerland. Many went into hidïng, sheltered by Italian

families or by Catholic priests. Levi's mother hid in the mountain region of Val d7Aosta,

north of Turin, until the end of the war (Cicioni, 149).

During that time Levi carried obviously false papers, and was rumored to be a

Jew. The Fascist officer who interrogated him told him that he could choose between

identifying himself a partisan or declaring himself a Jew. The on- option would mean

execution while the other would result in his being kept in an internment camp until the

end of the war. Levi chose to reveai his real identity and on Febniary 17, 1944, he was

transferred to Fossoli, the main Italian internment camp, near Modena in Emilia

Romagna. Levi boarded the train, which lefi for Auschwitz on February 22. The fint

selection took place as soon as the prisoners arrived. Al1 except twenty-nine women and

ninety-five men were sent directly to the gas chambers. Levi did not meet this fate;

instead, he was tattooed with the matnculation number 1743 1 7 (Suntivai, 9- 16).

Although he knew what awaited Jews in Fascist Italy, Levi chose not to flee his country.

2.5 Memory

Memory plays a major role in the life of any human being. We have ample oppomuiity

to observe that the function of remembering, which is in fact much more of an active

process than a paradigm of static memory would suggest, is detemined not only by our

psychological intentions but also by our moral will (Lang, 18). in the case of collective

memory, we must also consider this mord obligation while practicing the ability to

remember.

According to the Jewish religion, when a nation, or even mankind, collectively

acts on the stage of history with the heIp of the strength provided by remembering, this

should always derive from a moral obligation. The divine spirit is omnipresent in history

and manifests itself in invincible moral Iaws, which place primary importance on the

hnction of remembering (The Five Books of Moses, 2). Jewish moral codes originated

from the compelling necessity to remember. As individuals, we instinctively keep a

record of Our lives, their chief events and accomplishments. From the beginning, the

Jews learned from the Torah, and as a nation, they chose not to forget. Remembering is

found at the very heart of Jewish life as it is stated in the introduction to the book The

Five Books of Moses (3) and is a recurring motif in the history of the Jewish people.

The shared starting point of Améry's Jenseits von Schttld und Siihne and Levi's

Se qtîesto è un uomo is the exploration of memory and the self. In this respect, one

French author should be mentioned, Charlotte Delbo, who focuses in the book Rrcschwitz

and Aper on memory and uses it not in a literary term but as a means of categorizing the

Holocaust experience, or more specifically the Holocaust suwivor memoir. Delbo

realized as she was writing about Days and Memory in the introduction to Auschwitz and

Aper toward the end of her life, that the challenge to hiture readen would be how to

reconstruct those years whose "unthinkable" incidents no one really wished to reawaken

from the slumber of oblivion. She began her volume with the words "Explain the

unexplainable" (Delbo, 4), and like Primo Levi, she was still tryïng to do it forty years

after the event; again iike Levi, she had made the attempt in other works many times

before. She spoke of two beings, her Auschwitz self and her post-Auschwitz selc and

used the image of a snake shedding its skin to conjure up 3 sense of her new nature

emerging after the camp years (Delbo, XV). Unfortunately, unIike the snake's skin,

which shrivels, disintegrates, and disappears, what Delbo called the skin of Auschwitz

memory remained. bbAuschwitz is so deeply etched on rny memory," she wrote, "that 1

cannot forget one moment of it. So you are living with Auschwitz? No, I live next to it.

Auschwitz is there, undterable, precise, but enveloped in the skin of memory, an

impermeable skin that isolates it fiom my present self. Unlike the snake's skin, the skin

of memory does not renew itself [. . .]. Thinking about it makes me tremble with

apprehension" (DeIbo, XVII). Since Delbo foresaw this, she developed a crucial

distinction to help her discnminate between two operations of memory: speaking of the

"me" of now, living under the control of what she called mémoire ordinaire, which can

be translated as "common memory," and the "me" of then, the Auschwitz "me," living

under the domination of mémoire profonde, or "deep memory" (Delbo, 7). Comrnon

memory urges us to regard the Auschwitz ordeai as part of a chronology, a dismal event

in the past that the very fact of survival helps to redeem. It delivers us h m the pain of

remembenng the unthinkable. "1 am very formate," Delbo writes, "in not recognizing

myself in the self that was in Auschwitz [. . .] 1 feel that the one who was in the camp is

not me, is not the penon who is here, facing you" (Delbo, 9). Deep memory, on the other

hand, reminds us that the Auschwitz past is not really past and never will be, although on

occasion Delbo seems to believe that the two kinds of memory can remain insulated Erom

each other. Delbo's approach to memory focuses on its relation to the self, exploring the

unexplainable implications of having lived one's life in Auschwitz and then subsequently

swived. Auschwitz was for her a countertime, never merely relegated to the past, but a

constant cornpanion. This is aiso the case with both Améry and Levi. Thus, as Epahi

explains it, deep mernory tries to recall the Auschwitz self as it was back then (as in

Levi's S&ul in Auschwitz and Améry's Jenseis von Schufd und Stïhne). Cornmon

memory has a dual function: it restores the self to its normal pre-and post-camp routines

but aiso offea detached portraits from the vantage point of today, where one cm only

try, however inadequately, to picture what it m u t have been like then. Deep memory

thus derives from and depends on common memory, knowing what common memory

cannot know but trying noneiheless to express the profound significance of the past

(Ezrahi, 5).

So far 1 have tried to give a general overview of two main ways of categorizing

Holocaust memory not used in a literary term but in terms of deep memory and another

in relation to common memory. To this category, both Arnéry's and Levi's memoirs are

related.

My own approach to Holocaust literature is based on Ezrahi's genre rankings in

which he talks about non-fiction memoirs, inciuding those of Levi and Arnéry, and

survivor fiction, where authors like Levi and Jurek Becker nghtfully belong. The first

"genus," and the only one that 1 intend to deal with in this thesis, is the most

straightforward. It inciudes memoirs and diaries written by men or women who for the

most part were amateur authors (Levi). They invariably composed their works

immediately d e r their r e m fiom Auschwitz. While the authors' intentions Vary, most

of their writings revolve around the fear of forgetting and the Ionging for deliverance

fiom mental anguish and ethical consciousness to bear witness. There was a sense of

urgency driving witnesses to comrnunicate to fiends and Ioved ones what had happened.

Ezrahi calls this "documentary literature" (Ezrahi, 29).

1 have aiready mentioned Levi and Jurek Becker in reference to nwivor fiction.

This category deals with those works that use Holocaust themes, references, settings and

characten in order to develop a new setting for a given story. Such is the case of Jurek

Becker's Jakob der Lügner, the story of a simple, honest, and not particularly brave

Jewish man in wartime Germany. Becker condemns History for penecuting the world's

innocents, who in his story are the inhabitants of a ghetto. Their lives depend on al1 sorts

of snippets of news most of which are fabrications that can plausibly pass for tmth. In

this way he shows that a lie can ultimately become a beneficent illusion for these

innocent people.

1 shall nonetheless focus exclusively on the first genre, non-fiction Holocaust

literature. The individual chapten that follow treat works dealing with the extermination

camp in Auschwitz, as it concemed individual victims and survivors like Jean Améry

and Primo Levi. Their lives and works intertwine in such a way as to document the

Shoah that marks the history of our twentieth century.

3. Primo Levi: Se que- 2 un uomo (Survntal in Auschwitz)

For comparative nasons of viewpoint and treatrnent of the sarne events, this chapter will

focus on the principal non-German author mentioned in the introduction, Primo Levi.

Primo Levi spent his life trying to explain the nature of the abomination that was

Auschwitz. As an author he succeeded in representing the entire spectnun of Italian

Holocaust literature. His international esteem may be gauged by the fact that virtually

every recent English-language anthology of Holocaust wi ting has excerpted his works.

However, Levi's international popularity grew significantly only aAer his death, and his

current fame is inextricably related to the increased interest in the Holocaust. His books

compel worldwide attention in a way few Italian authon this centwy have, and they have

been translated into many languages.

Levi is one of the very few non-professional writers (he practiced as a research

scientist) to reach farne in Italian literature. He initially assurned the task of writing for

himself in order to organize and analyze his experience of Auschwitz. His fiat testimony

relates what occurred in the chernical lab in Bwa, a sub camp in the Auschwitz cornplex.

He began scribbling midl notes to himself on scraps of paper, or in his chemist's

notebook, abaut how he would not know how he would be able to tell anyone.

Only once he had been liberated fiom Auschwitz and retumed home to Turin did

Levi proceed to write his story in earnest. The result was a mal1 volume that failed to

gain the interest of any of the major Italian publishen. in fact,

Levi's testimony was so new and traumatic that in the beginning no one even listened. Indeed, his first book was read in manuscript and rejected by the editon

at Einaudi, then the most prestigious publisher in ItaIy. To make matters woae, the manuscript was read by a Jewish writer, Natalia Ginzburg. To this day Ginzburg is unable to justim her rejection, for which there can be only one explmation: either h m immaturity or insensitivity, she had not understood the book. (Carnon, 73)

The text was only to be published in 1947 by a ma11 press named De Silva, on

the recomrnendation of Levi's fnends, Franco Antonicelli and Alessandro Galante

Garrone. Very few copies sold, and soon after, the publishing Company collapsed,

seemingly relegating Levi's book to oblivion. Rediscovered at the 1950's exhibit on

Italian deportation, Levi's mernoir was republished by Einaudi in 1958. Since then, it has

sold over a million copies and has never been out of print. In 1972 it was adopted for use

in the Italian secondary school curriculum and is still being used to this day (Gold, 49).

While Se questo è un uorno is Levi's best known book, and is the focus of this

chapter, it constitutes only a mal1 part of his overall production. Sevenl of his books

have become classics within the field of Italian literature. La Tregua (The Reawakening)

won the first Prernio Campiello in 1963, and La chiave a stella (The Monkey S Wrench)

took the 1979 Prernio Strega. Se non ora. quando? (I/not Now, When?) was awarded

both the 1982 Premio Campiello and the Premio Strega (Cicioni, 49). Two other works

gained fme not only in Italy but also abroad, namely Sistema periodico (Tne Periodic

Table), which brought Levi to the attention of the Amencan rnarke?, and Isomrnersi e i

salvnti ( The Drowned und the Suved). Swvival in Auschwifz has a secure place in

contemporary Italian literature as well as in international Holocaust literature. In fact,

' Giulio Einaudi notes in "Primo Levi e la casa editrice Einaudi" that Levi's success in Arnerica began with the publication of nie Periodic Table in 1984, nine years d e r h! sistem periodico had appeared in Itdy. Its success in turn aroused interest in Levi's other books, especially Sunival in Auschwitz, which until then, in its 1 959 Onon

any study of Italian Holocaust Literature must start with Primo Levi, just as much as any

study of Primo Levi mut commence with Sumival in Auschwitz. He would probably not

have become a writer had it not been for his Auschwitz expenence, since the narration of

that period eiggered the dawning of his writing career.

Little in Levi's early years gave any indication that he would later become a

writer. As Levi says of himself, "An indifferent student in high school, mediocre in

Italian, and poor in history, I was more interested in physics and chemistry, and I later

chose a profession, that of a chemist, which had nothing in common with the world of

the written word" (Uomo, 1973 ,2~9 )~ .

After he had finished high school, Levi enrolled in the science faculty at the

University of Turin. Although no Jews were allowed to begin University studies after the

racial laws of 1938, those already enrolled were pemitted to finish their degrees. Levi

graduated with honors in 1941, receiving a diploma with the inscription "of the Jewish

race" after his name (Cinanni, 42). He then found some short-term lab work, first in

Lanzo and then in Milan. In 1942, following the Russian victory of Stalingrad, Levi

joined the clandestine Purtito d'Azzone, and the following year, he joined the partisan

group that was operating in the Val d'Aosta Mountains. A few months later, on

December 13, the Fascist militia mested Levi. Aware that partisans were often shot, he

adrnitted to being an Italian citizen of the Jewish race. At that tirne, he did not know that

severai thousand Italian Jews had already been sent to their deaths. He did not realize

that upon admitting he was a Jew, his m g g l e for sunrival had just begun.

edition, had sold a mere hancihl of copies (40- 1 ). This quotation cornes from the 1973 Se questo è un uomo Einaudi annotated

scholastic edition, complete with b'self-interview" and notes by Levi.

Levi spent eleven months in Auschwitz. M e r only five months he saw himself as an old

man. Few in Auschwitz suMved zven five months. in fact, of the nearly five hundred

prisonen deported with Levi fkom Fossoli on February 22, 1944, only twenty-three came

back alive. Levi was Iiberated by the Red Army on January 24, 1945. Upon his r e m to

Italy and to his farnily, he took a job as a chernist and night watchman in a paint factory,

and immediately started to write his memoirs atter houn.

Levi explained that he undertook writing without the formal goal of producing a

book. Instead, through writing he sought to puri@ himself and to heal his spintual

wounds. In his interview with Ferdinand0 Camon he reported:

I've had the feeling that for me the act of writing was equivalent to lying down on Freud's couch. I felt such an overpowering need to talk about it that 1 talked out loud. Back then, in the concentration camp, t often had a dream: I dreamed that I'd retumed, come home to my family, told them about it, and nobody listened. The person standing in fiont of me doesn't stay to hear, he tums around and goes away. I told this drearn to my fnends in the concentration camp, and they said, "It happens to us too." (Carnon, 42)

Literature became a form of therapy through which he attempted to shape the

emotional dimensions of his experience. Another striking characteristic of Levi's writing

is the reasoned perspective that informs his literary description of the Nazis and their

final solution or genocide. As Lang notes, Levi's "ability to write rationally both reflects

F s ] moral response to the Shoah and it becomes his method for recounting events that,

because of their serious ethical implications, are difficult to portray literary" (Lang, 255).

For Levi, the construction of a mord response began simultaneously with the period of

his Lager internent. By writing while in Auschwitz, by tuming the attempted

destruction of his identity into a literary work infiormed by the need to understand, "Levi

uses art to reinstall order, to reconstruct human-ness. But in this process, Levi brings his

own world, his canon and history, to bear on the experience of Auschwitz precisely in

order to understand Auschwitz not as excluded kom, but in ternis of, the world" (Sachs,

772). Part of Levi's leaming how to survive depended precisely upon his human intellect;

namely the decision to become a witness to the Holocaust meant that Levi was constantly

observing and organizing those observations, assimilating what he expenenced into a

compendium of reflections on human-ness.

Se questo è un uomo belongs to the mainstream of Holocaust literature in its

description ofsurvivors' accounts of the death camps. Most of these memoirs have a

similar structure in that they descnbe the same sequence of events: arrest, joumey to the

camp, arrival, initiation, conditions, liberation; related themes address work, selections

for the gas charnben, and the effects of the camps on the pnsoners.

The theme of Se questo è un uomo comes to the surface in its short preface,

where Levi lists, somewhat self-effacingly, aiready well known details of the atrocities

carried out in the extermination camps. He does not attempt to point an accusing finger at

the perpetratoe of the Holocaust, even though he makes it clear that he cannot forgive

them. Levi reveals not only the harsh realities of the daily stniggle for survival, but also

the continual clash between good and evil. The Loger system he views as something

without reason, and thus a threat to hurnanity. in characterizhg its conceptualization and

implementation he provides specific examples of how individuals or groups have tried to

justiQ their paranoid conviction that al1 foreignen are enemies. It is the Lager experience

and al1 its long-lasting effects that compel him to write for us so that we can comprehend

the system's UILfathomable cruelty. This irrationality reaches such extremes that in

conclusion to the preface of his book, anticipating the reader's possible disbelief, Levi

observes, "It seems to me unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented"

(Swival, 6). Clearly, he is not altogether convinced that this information is a s

superfluous as it ought to be. In fact, the author's quest to supply the reader with

sufficiently persuasive evidence makes its presence felt throughout the entire book.

Immediately following the preface, he inserts his epigraph Shemo. This poem

indicates the author's true intent, i.e., to create not only a documentation of events, but a

mernorial. Actually, the title Se questo è un uomo (Ifthis is a man) is a line fiom Shema

(Wear" in Hebrew). The title immediately recalls Shema Israel, the most cornmon

Jewish prayer, central to the identity of every Jew. According to Jewish tradition. the

Shema is recited daily in prayer services and at the moment of impending death and

serves an essential role in the history of commemoration (See: Deuteronomy 6: 4- 10).

The mode of remembering is set out quite clearly in this passage. The words coming

fiorn God are to be kept in the heart, written on the doorpost (in the forrn of a mezzizah)

and on the arm and forehead (in the form of tefillin). They must also be repeated to one's

children upon rising and upon retiring. Levi paraphrases the Shema in his poem: "1

comrnand you these words/ Engrave them in your heartl At home, going by the way"

(Suntival, 8). He has sharpened the commemoration in the Shema to the point where the

words are not just to be kept in heart, but even inscnbed there upon. The poern,

strategically positioned at the beginning of Se questo è un uomo, stands as a memorial

against forgetting and alerts the reader to the seriousness with which Survival in

Atuchwitz is to be approached. As Gordon points out, "Levi is not only evoking the most

powerful and important prayer in Jewish tradition. He is also insisting on the

empowement of inscnbed language. The inscription of commemorative Ianguage which

Levi advocates here is strong in its evocation of Biblical commandments" (Gordon. 76).

Levi's Shema is as much a challenge to continuity as it is to unity. It serves

constantly to remind the reader of an effective breach and reflects, in its profane

inscription, a dimption to which continuity must regularly refer, and which it must

necessarily take into account.

Moses. Judaisrn's prophet, was authot-ized to write poetry and produced an

unforgettable poem in Deuteronomy 32, in words that would Iater serve as a witness

against Israel. Though recontextualizing Moses' poem, Levi's is likewise intended to

shock and disturb. But Moses is cornmanded to inscribe his poem upon the hearts of the

children of Israel, where it will dwell as a benign presence until called into action as the

voice of harsh memory. It is, therefore, to some extent palatable. The poem's message

may enipt only when required; it possesses its own selective trigger, whereas "Levi's

Shema lodges new words, new presence, in an old memory, and in so doing fixes in our

ears a harsh, discordant gloss on oneness. The poem takes the reader constantly back to

mernories and images that would otherwise be buried and readily forgotten" (Gordon,

78).

in order to convince the reader immediately that his account will accurately

represent the truth, Levi vows to relate only what he personally saw and experienced.

This he does by beginning his story at the precise moment of his arrest: "1 was captured

by the Fascist Miiitia on December 13, 1943" (Survival, 9). From the very fust chapter,

Levi's detailed repertoire of dates, numbers and statistics help to consolidate the

credibility of his story: "At the moment of my arrivai, that is, at the end of January, 1944,

there were about one hundred and fifty Italian Jews in the camp, but within a few weeks

their nurnber rose to over six hundred" (Sunival, 1 O). These details oblige even the most

skeptical reader to notice that his text contains a vast compendium of verifiable

information and quantifiable concrete facts that could be easily ratified in any reference

work on the Holocaust. Levi, too, expenenced grave moments of doubt when writing his

story: 'Today, at this very moment as 1 sit writing at a table, I myself am not convinced

that these things really happened" (Survival, 94). Levi was aware of the strangeness of

the events he was describing and of the necessity to establish a link between his world

and that of his readers by the use of supportive statistical data in order to convey his

expenences to them.

Birvival in Auschwitz opens with the astonishing words, "It was my good

fortune" (5). Likewise the word "luckily" pervades the entire text. And so, "luckily" he

was not deported until February 1944; "luckily" his profession as a chemist marked him

out for slave labor in a chernistry lab; "luckily" he spoke German; "luckily" he was able

to endure the eleven months at Auschwitz and return home to Turin. However, the

constant mention of luck at the beginning of Levi's mernoir introduces the reader to a

welter of conflicting sentiments that manifestly still affect the Holocaust survivor. Why

was I the one who swvived? Who or what determined who survived and who did not? If

these are inevitably questions that one is left asking, does it not follow that by associating

his own endurance with good luck, Levi feels guilty for surviving in lieu of someone

else? He even feeis the necessity to confront his shame by dedicating a chapter to it in

another relevant novel, The Drowned and the Saved:

Are you ashamed because you are dive in place of another? And in particular, of a man more generous, more sensitive, wiser, more usefûi, more worthy of living than you? You c m o t exclude this: you examine yourself, you review your memories, hoping to find them a.11, and that none of them are masked or

disguised; no, you find no obvious transgressions, you did not usurp anyone's place, you did not beat anyone (but would you have had the strength to do so?), you did not accept positions (but none were offered to you . . .), you did not steal anyone's bread; nevertheless you cannot exclude it. It is no more than a supposition, indeed the shadow of a suspicion: that everyone is his brother's Cain [. . .] (62).

Indeed, life in the Lager was fought for and maintained through the strength of human

nature, Jewish law, and self-preservation.

Not only Levi, but also the pnsonen themselves felt shame, felt implicated, not

because they had actively participated in the crimes, but because they perceived the

nature of the crimes and because such absolute and irrevenible injury had been inflicted

by other human beings. They were involved by virtue of their knowledge and their

common humanity (Wilson, 8 1). In Levi's account, shame is the irnrnediate response to

the recognition of degraded humanity. He detects it on the faces of his liberaton, a

shame that the Germans themselves never knew, and he describes it in the pnsoner's

transition to fieedom. Levi recognizes that for the pnsonen, "on a rational plane, there

should not have been much to be ashamed of, but shame persisted nevertheless"

The eariy chapters, including ' n i e Journey" through "This Side of Good and

Evil," read as a direct chronological report on the events. In the second and most

extensive part, comprising "The Drowned and the Saved" through "The Last One," the

author spends more time on narrating detailed episodes related to his imprisonment and

ernerges as a prot agonist. Proceeding b y way of memory-linked associations, he

combines characters and situations to give a more dynamic view of camp life than he had

done previously. The third and hnal part of the book, 'The Story of Ten Days," employs

a diary form to narrate the last days spent in the camp, just before the entrance of the

The Lager, in which reason has no place, embodies the ultimate threat to

humanity because its irrationality has the power to erase the morality of its inhabitants.

As he introduces his readers to Auschwitz, Levi descnbes the various preparations of

families as they ready themselves for their journey to the camp. In the opening scenes of

the book, he describes the mothers, insouciantly packing their belongings and caring for

their children. Their activity and the subsequent imloading of the trains upon their arriva1

at Auschwitz appear almost shockingly normal and represent the final scenes of typical

human activity beforc Levi enten Auschwitz. As he descnbes the humanity of these

individuals, he addresses his readers directly, irnrnediately forcing thern to place

themselves unavoidably at the scene of the departure:

I . [. . .] the rnothen stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and picked up the luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapen, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other srnall things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the sarne? If you and your child were going to be killed tornorrow, would you not give him to eat today? (Surviv~l, 1 1 )'

Levi continues his recollection with a description of what takes place during the

1 s t night in barrack 6A, occupied by a certain Galtegno and his family. A happy, simple,

and pious group who had corne fiom Tripoli with their carpenters' tools, kitchen utensils,

accordions, and violins, they do not allow the news of imminent deportation to

undermine their dignity. The women busy themselves with tidying up and getting

4 The original quotations in Itaiïan for Survival in Aurchwitr and in Geman for At the Mind's Ltmits will be piven in nurneric order in the Appendix at the end of the thesis.

everything ready before sitting on the bare ground in a circle to commence their

lamentations, prayers, and weeping, performing the Iewish mouniing ritual that

cornmernorates the destruction of the first and second temples (Survivd, 1 1 - 12). The

detailed dwelling upon this scene emphasizes the last actions of human warmth and

togethemess the author will experience for a long time to corne.

Levi records how higher-level reasoning yields io instinctual action. The assault

on human dignity is so irrational that no reasoned response can possibly prevail. In truth,

death rnight have appeared desirable in the face of such dehumanization. Even the

selection at the group's arriva1 follows no rationally discemible pattern. ïhose who are

judged unfit for the Reich are irnmediately sent to death. As Levi survives future

selections, usually carried out to make room for the new arrivais, he begins to realize that

it is blind fate that determines who will live. Often the young and the stronger are sent to

the gas charnbers while, illogically, the old and the sick are left to live for at least one

more tm. Levi recognizes this deception: "This is hell. Today, in our times, heil must be

like this" (Sunival, 18). As signaled in the title of the chapter "On the Bottom," this

acknowledgrnent finds him ai his lowest point, where one cannot think anymore, since it

equals being already dead. This is only the beginning of the process of dehumanization,

the elimination of residual dignity, and the Germans appear to enjoy the slow mental

torture and physical abuse of their victims. The Nazi system methodically reduces those

who have been spared an immediate trip to the gas chamber to an animal-like state.

Stripped of their narne, each captive has a number tattooed on his or her left arm and is

eventuaily dressed in a zebra-sniped tunîc with a red and yellow star. Levi becomes

Haftling 1745 17 and his capton consider his life like that of d l the others to be worth

about as much as that of an animal. Stripped of clothes and other belongings, in order to

be shorn like animals, the prisoners are forced to abandon whatever remnants they have

of their past dignity. In the humiliation of laying everything bue, the pnsoners are driven

by a sense of modesty and instinctively ûy to cover themselves in the presence of others.

Privacy, however, is not allowed, and modesty is useless. The act of disinfecting by

taking a shower is a requirement for entering a world already infested with a diseased

morality as well as physical filth (Survival, 19-20). The pages bnnging this paradoxical

purification to life are arnong the most poignant in the entire book. The fast-paced

rhythm, the repetition of words, and the switch from past to present tense, al1 contribute

to the engaging description of the action. The text poignantly captures the newly anived

victims' state of confusion and fear. Everything is carried out in a tempo grotesquely

suggesting the well-known German military passion for precision. In a short time, the

imprisoned men and women have been deprived of their loved ones, their homes, their

customs, their clothing, in fact everything. Among the unpleasant sounds of kicks and

many foreign tongues, the prisoners will readily follow orders and execute them upon

command. Risoners have no right to question them or seek explanations, for in the camp

"ist kein w a r ~ m ' ~ (Survival, 25). Physicai degeneration is produced rapidly under such

conditions.

in the third chapter, 'Initiation," bread becomes a constant obsession, and

prisonen Ieam the word for it in several languages: Brot - Broid - ch l eb - pain -

lechem - kenyer (Survival, 34). Humiliahg deeds becorne standard practice for the

sake of an additionai piece of bread. Among the physical hardships, hunger proves the

moa tormenting. Food becomes the fixation that will burst into dreams and play al1 kinds

of tricks on one's vision. Many pnsoners smack their lips and their jaws in their sleep in

a collective dream reminiscent of the myth of Tantalus, condemned to not being able to

grasp the food and water within his reach. Levi even comments on this story in his

conversations with Ferdinand0 Camo, saying:

[. . .] this drearn of talking about it was certainly comparable to the dream of Tantalus, which was of "eating-almost," of being able to bring the food to one's mouth but not succeeding in biting into it. It's the dream of a prirnary need to eat and drink. So was the need to talk about it. Already at that time it was a basic need. Later I chose to write it as the equivalent of talking about it. (Carnon, 42)

The prisoners are continually tantalized and then deprived, and this engenders

haIIucinations such as the one in which they associate the movement of a degrading

machine with the act of chewing. The Gerrnans even refer to their food as Fressen

(animal food). The Lager signifies starvation and the pnsoners are peaonified as living

victims of hunger. Its force sometimes makes them forget their other pains. This vision

of earthly hell clearly suggests the very depths of human experience.

Levi sees the camp as being divided between the "drowned," who will soon

succumb, and the "'saved," who manage in one way or another to survive or are at least

able to postpone their death. The "Muselmann," the tenn used to designate the prisoner

abandoned by their comrades, is the type that constitutes the core of the camp, tops the

list of candidates doomed to "%rown," while the Prominenten, with their privileges, will

succeed in extending their lives (Survival, 80). Most of those who hold preferential

positions are political prisonen or outright cnminals. A few, though not initially favored

by fate, manage to survive, often at the expense of othen.

Stripped of material belongings, some allow themselves to be stripped of their

mord values as well. Survival is achieved by any means available, and Levi is at pains to

recreate specific characters who come to personify these issues. Weak little Schepschel,

who has suMved from one day to the next by executing petty deals, on occasion obtains

extra bread by dancing for Slovak prisoners. He does not think twice about betraying his

accomplice, Moischl, to ingratiate himself in the eyes of the BlocEltester in order to

obtain a better job. Alfred L., the self-important, aloof engineer, displays extreme

courtesy and self-sacrificing discipline. His reward is a specialized position in the

chernical laboratory, where he perfoms in the most vigorous fashion. Elias Lindzin, the

dwarf, inspires fear and respect due to his excessive strength. An indestructible fie& of

extreme vulgarity, he is hardly unàerstood when he speaks his distorted Yiddish. The

Lager environment is not uncornfortable for him since it is a place in which he prospers

and rules (Strrvival, 8 8).

Lindzin is the opposite of H ~ M , a characrer who affects Levi greatly. He

perceives Henri as the most despicable person because he is the most calculating, a

seemingly civil and intellectual twenty-two-year-old Frenchman who speaks several

languages, English and German among them. Levi first feels a special afinity for him

because of his formidable scienti fic and classical culture (Survival, 90). However, he

subsequently perceives him as a professional seducer and compares him to the serpent in

Genesis for his cold and calculating derneanor. He knows that H ~ M survived the camp

but, because he recognizes how the Frenchman managed this, he emphatically does not

wish to see hirn again, though h e would very much like to see al1 the other survivoa.

Levi h d s it degrading that Henri uses his gifts, which shouid ennoble humanity, for the

purposes of prostitution and seduction.

The end of this discourse marks the book's second phase, where Levi reflects

more personally on the implications of the Holocaust. Since the man about whom he

speaks is essentiaily himself, dong with ail the others like him, he is implicitly asking

the reader to consider how he has dealt with and responded to the violence of the Lager.

Even more important to him is to show how his survival, unlike Henri's, did not corne

about through compromises and moral trade-offs. Despite the punishment and the horror,

Levi has emerged from his experience with his dignity largely untarnished, having

rejected the process of human degradation imposed by the oppressors. in the chapter

"The Drowned and the Saved" he makes the point that very few survived Auschwitz

without having conceded sornething of their individual moral positions. Those who did

stay alive with their integrity relatively intact had the fiber of saints or martyrs, or were

perhaps assisted by fate. Levi considers himself neither a saint nor a martyr, for he views

himself very self-deprecatingly as belonging to those favored by providence. However,

he never wishes to attain, and he never in fact attains the status of the prominent ones. He

is able to survive on the basis of his inner strength, his natural abilities, and a certain

amount of luck. On the other hand, one could try to survive the physical ordeal of the

camps in many different ways. As the laws of the camp are brutal and primitive, favoring

those whose moral values are negotiable, staying dive is extraordinarîly dificult. The

perfect example of a man who can thrive in the Lager, who is physicaily almost

indestructible, as well as being violent and insane, is Elias Lindzin. His incredible bodily

strength enables hîm to stop working once his unparalleled capacity for labor becomes

comrnon knowledge, "His fame as an exceptionai worker spread quite soon, and by the

absurd law of the Lager, h m then on he practicdly ceased to work" (Survivd, 88).

Elias is most fit for camp iife because he is not touched in any way by the

standard rules of conduct prevalent among most men. In fact, Levi descnbes hirn as

being fit only for life in the Lager. Elias' ability to be happy in the Lager is in inverse

proportion to his integrity. He functions as an example of what Levi is not, as does the

clever and cunning Henri, the prime illustration of Elias' opposite. His propensity to use

people in order to survive places hirn in a radically different category of contrast from

that of the narrator, whose relations with the othen in the camp are never manipulative.

Through this contrast Levi persuasively stresses that one necessarily has to foqo one's

former way of reasoning in order to attain any degree of accommodation with life in the

Lager.

In the chapter "The Last Ten Days," which takes the reader to the third and final

phase of tnis work, Levi reminisces on the Germans' withdrawal from Auschwitz. The

Lager system comes to a halt, and a distinct change occurs in Levi's writing, especially

through his adoption of the diary-style narrative. This fonn entails the idea of keeping

notes on one's actions so that othen may know what happened. "The Last Ten Days"

refiects on the positive feelings Levi rediscovers in himseit In addition, it offen a

glimpse into his new-fond hope. Despite his illness he nses from his sickbed. Through

ingenuity, intelligence, strength, and courage, and with the assistance of Charles and

Arthur, he searches for food and other items that could be of use to him as well as these

for whom he has now become a caretaker: he acts in order to fulfil his moral duty. But

the most significant gesture, signaling to Levi that his actions are indeed good and kind,

cornes when the other inmates, as a sign of recognition and gratitude, offer to share their

bread with him. Bread, the most essential nourishment, over which people in the Lager

have killed one another, now becomes once again the symbol of sharing.

The use of verb tenses, especially the past tenses and the present tense, in Levi's

book have considerable significance as a lit- device and as a key to his presentation

of Holocaust memory. The Italian language offers a wider range of possible past tenses

than English, and Levi makes full use of the entire specûum, especially the simple past,

the past perfect and the parsoto r e m ~ t o . ~

Chapter 1 of Se questo è un tiomo opens with the words, "1 was captured by the

Fascist Militia on December 13, 1943" (Survzval, 916 "Ero stato catturato dalla Milizia

fascista il 13 dicembre 1943" (Uorno, 1 1). [n the original Italian version the use of the

past perfect leads the reader back to an earlier, yet not so distant time. It leaves one with

a sense of incompletion, as if the narrator had been in the middle of an undertaking when

he was suddenly intempted.

Levi then continues, "Three Fascist Militia companies [. . .] broke into our refuge

one spectral snowy dawn and took me down to the valley as a suspect person"

(Survivui, 1 O). This shi ft in perspective is accompanied by a change in tense, Crom the

imperfect to the passato rernoro: "Tre centurie della Milizia [. . .] imippero in una

spettrale alba di neve ne1 nostro rifùgio, e mi condussero a valle corne persona sospetta"

(Uomo, 1 1). This is the beginning of his nightmare voyage that culminated in his

imprisonment in Auschwitz. For the rest of the book Levi chooses the pmsato remoto to

C - It should be pointed out that although the repeated use of the passaîo remofo may sound outmoded to modem ears more accustomed to a more convenational language, both in interpersonal relations and in p ~ t , it was the standard tense for narrative prose up until the second halfof this century.

The English translation of Se questo è un uomo uses a simple past tense whereas the original Italian version expresses it with a past perfect tense.

relate the successive adaptations and various sacn fices made by the victims. Therefore

actions such as interrogations, transports, leave-takuigs, work details, food service,

sicknesses, and burials corne to life in the precise, but distant passato remoto.

In the last section of this first chapter the use of the present tense introduces yet

another level of reading which engages the reader in a meditation on the nature of the

narrative self rather than recalling the incessant memory of the concentration camp

experience, or life in the shoes of the campmate. Thus, Levi States, "Sooner or later in

life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who

pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable"

(Strrvival, 13). This view of life recurs thmughout Levi's work, since for him the world is

not made up of mutually exclusive dichotomies; for unhappiness and happiness dwell

together, and good and evil coexist, even within the same penon. Consequently, Levi

even hesitates to judge the members of the Sonderkommandos as each person has both

good and evil propensities and qualities. Wus the Holocaust must be seen, according to

Levi, as the ultimate product of man's authority and unbalanced Me.

Later, in at least one dramatic instance, Levi calls on the present perfect to

apostrophize his ex-guardians. This cornes in the chapter entitled "The Last One,"

'bKamaraden. ich bin der Letzte! " ("îomrades, I am the last one!") (Survival, i 35)

exclaimed by an inmate just seconds before he is hanged. However, psychologically,

physically and spintually reduced as prisoners and slaves the inmates failed to protest.

This demonstrates how the Germans succeeded in destroying the last vestige of human

dignity in any inhabitant of the Lager: 'To destroy a man is difficult, ahos t as difficult

as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded"

(Survival, 135-136).

In Levi's grammatology, the present tense conveys the incomplete or ongoing

past events of Auschwitz, while the past tenses merely refer to the mechanical, habitua1

actions of everyday life. Levi justifies his careful deployment of tenses in the annotated

scholastic edition of Se questo è un uorno. 'The deliberate confusion of the verb tenses

expresses the overlapping of mernories and sensations in the prisoners' souk at the fint

contact with the cnide reality of the camp.'"

We have observed the use of past and present in Levi's Auschwitz mernoir. But,

what about the use of the future tense? When thinking about what is to come, Levi

contemplates beholding his beloved mountains outside Turin on returning home (see the

chapter "The Canto of Ulysses"). But more importantly, the future secures the promise of

the next meal, the chance to survive after the next task, the next blow fiom the Kapo, the

next visit to the Ka-Be, the next selection.

The iives of the Jewish inrnates were weighed in the amount of work they could

perfonn before being murdered, either from exhaustion or by gas; the inmates

themselves measured their lives in minutes, for death could come at any moment. In

Auschwitz, a glance into the future rarely entered by way of the Zugünge. OnIy the new

anivals talked of retunung home or gave credence to reports that the war would soon

end. Instead, most of the prisonen were more inclined to believe reports like that of the

Ka-Be nurse who told Levi, "Du Jude kaputt. Du schnell Krematorium fertig" (Survival,

44). In a cruel play on the deeply moving words of the Passover liturgy, one kwish

7 1 have given my own translation of the quotation referred to in the scholastic edition of Se quesio è un uomo.

inmate wishes Levi, "L'année prochaine à la maison! [. . .] à la maison par la

Cheminée! " (Survivai, 65).

Present and Past were the only temporal dimensions at Auschwitz. The future

meant hope, and it was too dangerous:

2. For living men, the units of time always have a value, which increases in ratio to the strength of the interna1 resources of the person living through them; but for us, hom, days, months spilied out sluggishly fiom the future into the past, always too slowly, a valueless and superfluous material, of which we sought to rid ounelves as soon as possible. With the end of the season when the days chased each other, vivacious, precious and irrecoverable, the future stood in Front of us, gray and inarticulate, like an invincible bamier. For us, history had stopped. (Sumival, 107)

No one can, in fact, think senously of the fùture, about which Levi writes, "Do

you know how one says 'never' in camp slang? Morgen fnüh, tomorrow moming"

(Survival, 12 1). However, Levi never forgets his task of survival in order to bear witness,

even during the most horrendous moments of his imprisoment. But the question

remains, and this is one of the most deeply complex issues that Levi raised, and which he

could never elude: why am i the one who sunrived?

How are we, as readers and even adrnirers of Primo Levi, to corne to terrns with

the complex issues of guilt and innocence? Perhaps Levi's own attitude c m guide us.

First, he invites us to meditate upon the reality of a world detached from the world, of an

Arbeifslager or, wone, a Ventichrungslager. Then, we are invited to consider man's

' first duty' to himself: to survive (a duty taught even by the Talmud scribes). Levi

himself writes:

Changing moral codes is always costly: al1 heretics, apostates, and dissidents know this. We cannot judge our behavior or that of the others, dnven at that time by the code of that time, on the basis of today's code; but the anger that pervades

us when the "others" feel entitled to consider us "apostates," or more precisely, reconverted, seems nght to me. (The D & S, 1 12)

Levi expands the modem duty of the Venzichtungslager survivor: to Iive in order

ro bear witness. Further complicating the picture is the intricate, ruling systern of

responsibility within the camps. The scheme begins with the Kapos at the bottom and

escalates to a point where fellow captives are forced to oversee each other. The victims

are made to smear their hands with the blood of their fellow campmates. And the creators

of this system, the Nazis, remain at the top of the hierarchy, insulated From the horror

and degradation they have worked to produce. 'This institution," Levi says in The

Drowned and the Saved, "represented an attempt to shift on to othen, specifically the

victims, the burden of guilt, so that they were depnved of even the solace of innocence"

(89). The Nazis cruelly and coldly enlisted their own victims against fellow victims in

assisting them with their atrocities: "It is not enough to relegate them to marginal tasks;

the best way to bind them is to burden them with guilt, cover them with blood,

compromise hem as much as possible, thus establishing a bond of complicity so that

they can no longer tum back" (The D & S, 125).

Within this system of complex pressures, one loses one's moral force. To judge a

man in Auschwitz by the standards of the world beyond is to deny the unique situation of

the men and women imprisoned there. We should listen to what the suMvon of that

world tell us, and put ourselves empathetically in their situation so as to reflect on their

quandary and to be vigilant. Levi's actions, and any survivor's for that matter, can be

analyzed, and yet judgment should be avoided. in this respect he comments,

It's tnie that I refkined 60m fomulating judgements in Sumival in Auschwitz. 1 did so deliberately, because it seemed to me inopportune, not to Say importunate,

on the part of the witness, namely myself, to take the place of the judge. So 1 nispended any explicit judgement [. . .]. Any overail judgment on the inûinsic, imate quaïities of a people to me smells of racism. (Camon, 13)

Levi firmly rejects any cal1 to judgment, prefemng instead a stance of impotentia

judicanti (Cinanni, 65). His prime duty as a survivor, he tells us, is to bear witness. This

raises one of the questions posed at the begiming of this chapter what made Levi fint

put pen to paper, or why did he, over time, become a writer? Survival in Atuchwitz, he

explains, was not written "in order to formulate new accusations; it should be able,

rather, to h i s h documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind"

(Stirvival, 5). The writing impulse originated in the Lager and grew out of the need to

pass on the story to othen. To put it differently, Levi's book is intended to appeal to our

collective memory. The iask of writing it is self-consciously complicated by issues of

shame, complicity, guilt. responsibility, and ethical consciousness. The need to testify is

thus bom out of a complex mix of compulsion and apprehension, urgency and horror.

Levi's first declaration ofhis motives in writing Strtvival in Auschwitz seems

straight forward enough, with none of the overtones of guilt and sharne that are raised

later, and yet his last statement on the subject lays bare the terrible moral and

psychological cost involved in answering the question, "why do you write?"

My religious fiend had told me that 1 suMved so that I could bear witness. 1 have done so, as best 1 could, and 1 could not have done so; [. . .] but the thought that this testifjhg of mine could by itself gain for me the privilege of surviving and living for many yean without senous problems troubles me because I cannot see any proportion between the privilege and its outcome. I must repeat: we, the suivivon, are not true witnesses. This is an uncornfortable notion of which 1 have become conscious little by Iittle, readuig the mernoin of others and reading mine at a distance of years. We survivors are no t only an exiguous but also an anomalous mùionty. (The D & S, 160)

Levi is in fact an exception, and not only in reference to the painfully self-

accusatory context given here, for he supplies an exceptional analysis of that grotesque

social experiment that was Auschwitz, using his remarkable mastery of the literary craft,

which supports and illuminates the profound message he seeks to deliver.

When Levi actually sat down to write his Auschwitz mernoir, one of his first acts

was to apologize to his readen for the flaws in his account: "1 recognize, and ask

indulgence for, the structural defects of the book" (Survival, 5). This type of initial

apology is a typical motif in Levi's non-fiction; a gambit that is strategically worked into

his prefaces, perhaps to absolve him of literary responsibility. In Survival in Auschwitz,

his first apology paves the way for a singularly arresting sentence, concluding the last

paragraph of his Preface. Before beginning his tale, as I mentioned at the begiming of

this chapter, Levi States that he does not feel it necessary to point out that everything

remembered in his account is the truth, that is, not fictional. This first claim, embedded

in the author's preface is at once direct, but also vaguely belligerent. Why does Levi use

such an ofniand tone to make a crucial point or even mention it in the fint place if indeed

these are the veritable facts, incontrovertible and indisputable. Why does Levi, an

eyewitness to events occumng just two years before he started to write his story, seek to

anticipate the objections and potential denials of his readers? The answer to these

questions can also be found in the Preface itself, when Levi categorizes the Holocaust

phenornenon as "the disturbing question" about which Survivai in Auschwitz will fumish

documents for "a quiet shidy of certain aspects of the human rnind" rather than

" formulate new accusations" (Survival, 5).

Furthemore, the m e r can also be found both in the histoncal record and in

Levi's own assertions. Four weeks afler their anival, even the prisoners in Auschwitz

were oAen unaware of, and loath to believe the reason for the giant smokestacks that

dominated the skyline. This was a typical reaction among the prisoners: a reluctance to

admit the temble and incomprehensible into their world, and the powerful division

between the inside and the outside. Levi and his fellow prisoners came to feel they were

let into a world that was beyond the imagination of their fellow man. Not only could it

not be conceived or explained, but it could hardly be believed that what was happening

was in fact happening. This presents a formidable obstacle for the writers of Holocaust

memoirs. Not only must they contend with the issue of credibility, but also with the

problem of how to make their tales understood.

If Levi's fame today rests less on his Iiterary talent than on his mon1 insight, that

is largely imputable to the overwhelrning success of Survivai in Auschwitz. His purpose

in writing was not to craft a work of literature but rather to find a means to account for

what he had expenenced through the catharsis O € writing. He confirms his lack of literary

ambition in Survival in Auschwitz at the outset of the book when, d e r his initial

apology, he goes on to confess:

3. Its origins go back, not indeed in practice, but as an idea, an intention, to the days of the Lager. The need to tell o u . story to "the rest" to make "the rest" participate in it, had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of competing with our other elementary needs. The book has been wrinen to satism this need: first and foremost, therefore, as an intenor liberation. Hence its hgrnentary character: the chapters have been wn'tten not in logical succession, but in order of urgency (Survivul, 5-6).

This suggests that Levi's primary motive in wrîting was to oblige others to participate in

his expenence.

Future critics took Levi at his word and disregarded the literary faults of his

work, focusing pnmarily on his message, his testimony and, in large rneasure, his

biography (Cicioni, 86). This said, there are indeed notable shortcomings in this work.

Cesare Cases, for example, notes a certain stilted school boyishness ("residuo scolastico"

Opere 1: IX) in Levi's early writing, exemplified by his fiequent use of the adverb

"quivi" (therein) in Szirwival in Auschwitz. Or we might note the haphazard shi fis in

person From "we" to 'lou." The book also contains occasional repetitions and omissions.

Siirvival in Auschwitz's biggest flaw, however, is to be found in its ending.

Consistent with his plan to write in order of urgency, the 1st chapter of the book, entitled

' n i e Story of Ten Days" nearly dispenses with the need for narrative drive. It narrates,

almost exclusively, the circumstances of Levi's liberation and introduces us briefly to

chancten and situations that will play prominent roles in the sequel, ïïze ~eawakenin~.'

The chapter takes the fom of a diary, with dated headings marking off the separate

entries.

The final paragraph of the book inforrns us of the fate of some of the people we

previously encountered in the book, characters who, with the exception of Charles,

hardly compare in Cullness of description and vividness to othen presented earlier, for

exarnple: Alberto, Elias, Nul1 Achtzehn, or Steinlaut Survival in Auschwitz ends with a

tepid, laconic round-up of the cast of characters in lieu of any sort of adequate

summation, insight, reflection or c losure:

- -- -

8 1 should point out that at the time Levi wrote Survival in Aurchwitz, he had no plans to write a subsequent memoir. The Reawakening was not written until 1962, and most IikeIy would never have been written if Survivul in Auschwitz had not been reprinted to critical acclaim by Einaudi in 1956.

4. Of the eleven of the Infektionsabteilung Somogyi was the only one to die in the ten days. Sertelet, Cagnolati, Towarowski, Lakmaker and Dorget [. . .] died some weeks later in the temporary Russian hospital of Auschwitz. In April, at Katowice, I met Schenck and Alcalai in good health. Arthur has reached his fmily happily and Charles has taken up his teacher's profession again; we have exchanged long letters and 1 hope to see him again one day. (Survival, 157)

And yet, what could constitute an adequate summation? Even given these so-

called lapses there is much that is worthy of praise in Levi's efforts as a writer. He is

unique in the field of Italian literature. Not only did he receive an academic training in

the pure sciences (physical chemistry), but he continued to work as a chemist for over

thirty yean while simultaneously writing essays, novels, and poetry. No other modem

Italian writer spent a lifetime as a working scientist. For instance, Carlo Emilio Gadda

received a degree in engineering but quickly abandoned that field for writing; Italo

Svevo ran the family paint business, but only after he had failed as a writer. Other

modem authon, like Italo Calvino and Luigi Malerba, were fascinated by science but

never practiced it (Cicioni, 34). ûnly Pnmo Levi pursued two panIIel careers, both in

science and in letten. He became a writer by sheer chance. If he had not expenenced

Auschwitz, he probably would never have written anything.

A central dilemma for the nwivor-author entailed the very act of communicating

his Holocaust experience and bringing it before his readers through his written account.

One solution would have been to compare the Auschwitz experience to other human

experiences by means of metaphor. Levi does indeed use metaphon to explore his

expenence while writing Survivaf in Auschwitz in his kequent references to Dante's

Inferno. At least ten allusions to Dante were finally edited out in addition to the chapter

called 'The Uysses Canto." There are many places in Suntival in Auschwitz where the

Christian language of salvation and redemption is signded, even to describe the radically

alien reality of Auschwitz. For example, Levi echoes the language of the Gospels saying,

"broad is the path to perdition, the paths to salvation are many, diEcult and irnprobab!e"

(Survivui, 90). This sentence brings to mind Mathew 7: 13, "Enter by the narrow gate; for

the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction [. . -1"; or "How weak our

flesh is!" (Survival, 74), a phrase which recalls again Matthew 26:4 1 or Mark 14:38, 'the

spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Levi's Jewish background renders his

recoune to Christian syrnbolisrn especially problematic. Nevertheless, we must keep in

mind the unique position of Italian Jewry with regard to the predominant Catholic

culture. Italy's Jews had lived side by side with their Christian neighbors for thousands

of years. Whether favored by mutual admiration, as in the Renaissance and afier

Emancipation, or whether subjected to the Jewish identity in the Middle Ages or to

forced conversions during the Counter-Reformation, Italian Jewish culture found a level

of acceptance and reciproci ty vis-à-vis its Christian counterpart which charactenzed few

other countries. Furthemore, key influences upon Levi's own life (a rnarginally Iewish

upbringing and a leflist ideology) lefi him mostly indifferent to the language of the

Jewish lihirgy, while somewhat prone to adopting the language of Christian salvation.

However, he inserts a Jewish and Old Testament citation as the very fint Biblical

reference in Sumiva[ in Auschwitz, quoting the opening lines of Genesis. Levi ironically

focuses on the obverse process, not explosion of light into the world, nor the separation

of light from darkness, nor the first day of creation, but the last night before the trip to

Auschwitz: "And the night came, and it was such a night that one knew that human eyes

would not witness it and sumive" (SuMval, II). Levi continues this Biblical reference,

noting his nascent recognition of his identity as a Jew, "We collected in a group in front

of their door [of a family of Libyan Jews at Fossoli], and we expenenced within

ourselves a grief what was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the

grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed every century" (Sunival, 12).

Levi's recoune to the Old Testament persists when reporting on the "Carbide

Tower" built by the inmates at the center of Buna. He notes that its bricks are held

together by hate and discord, just like the Biblical Tower of Babel. And so it is called by

the pnsoners: "Babelturm, Babelturm [. . .] erected in defiance of heaven like a stone

oath" (Survival, 73). Levi manages to reconsmct through a careful choice of words the

place he compares to Babel:

5. The confusion of languages is a fundamental component of the manner of living here: one is surrounded by a perpetual Babel, in which everyone shouts orders and threats in languages never heard before, and woe betide whoever fails to grasp the rneaning. No one has time here, no one has patience, no one listens to you; we recent arrivals instinctively collect in the corners, against the walls, a h i d of being beaten. (SuMvaf, 33)

By suppressing language's normal function to create and express rneaning the prisonen

at Auschwitz are rapidly dehumanized. Levi extends the Babel metaphor "by linking the

linguistic confusion of the camp to its horrible moral chaos" (Tager, 284). Thus, the

"Carbide Tower, which nses in the middle of Buna and whose top is rarely visible in the

fog, was built by us. Its bricks were called Ziegel, briques, tegula, cegli, karnenny,

mattoni, téglak, and they were cemented by hate; hate and discord, like the Tower of

Babel, and it is this that we cal1 it:-Babelturm, Babelturm" (Survival, 66).

Babel, the arch-symbol of discord, ironicaily becomes a key figurative motif and

structurai device:

Though Levi aas and remained an unbeliever, the Biblicai metaphor helps suggest the epic scale of the d e r i n g and evil present. Babel in the camp resulted not only Eoom the multiplicity of languages spoken by the inmates, but fiorn the attempt to negate language through violence. The diverse linguistically-based identities of the inmates were destroyed, and replaced by one identity based on race (as the Nazis undentood it) that signified a sub-human status. (Tager, 284)

The culmination of these Jewish and Biblical allusions cornes in the Srtrvivcrl in

Auschwitz chapter entitled "The Work" where Levi writes:

6. [Resnyk] told me his story, and today 1 have forgotten it, but it was certainly a sorrowful, cruel, and moving story; because so are al1 our stories, hundreds of thousands of stories, al1 different and al1 full of a tragic, disturbing necessity. We tell them to each other in the evening, and they take place in Norway, italy, Algeria, and the Ukraine, and are simple and incomprehensible like the stories in the Bible. But are they not themselves stories of a new Bible? (Survival, 59)

Levi effectively reveals the necessity of one to tell stories, and thus history. Al1 these

homFying accounts are part of our every day life. One should never forget these events

and should keep them in his or her memory like the stories of the Bible.

Shortly after completing î l e Drowned und the Saved, Levi may have committed

suicide. The manner of his death came suddenly. Some argue that he killed himself out

of feelings of guilt, because he had survived the horron of Auschwitz, whereas most had

died. Others, however, believe that it was not a suicide but an accident. in the af'terword

of the Amencan edition of Conversations with Primo Levi, Camon writes:

Levi had an inkling of this destiny: in a letter I received a couple of days after his death, and which was written a couple of days before it, he expressed a number of hopes and expectations (especially for the French translation), and told me hîs wishes and plans for the future. It is not a letter by sorneone thinking of suicide, but rather by someone who hasn't the slightest intention of ceasing to live and struggle. This is why his death (he fell down the stairwell of the building where he lived) seems to me an accident, not a voluntary act. (Camon, 74)

Whatever the circwnstances of Levi's death, it did not mark an absence or a void

since he had lefl behind a literary testament and a unique human document beaxing

witness to the defining moral event of the twentieth century, and revealing what it really

meant to survive both in and a@ Auschwitz.

4. Jean Amhy: Jenseits von Schuld und Siihne (At the Mind's Limits)

In his remarkable book, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne, Jean Améry has undertaken to

illuminate the predicarnent of the intellechial in Auschwitz. He has also proposed a

rational explanation for the problematic necessity and impossibility of being a lew by

elaborating this paradox of Jewish identity at the very limits of articulation.

To appreciate the arguments that follow, the pertinent details of biography and

cultural affiliation are necessary. Hans Mayer, alias Jean Améry, was bom in Viema in

19 12, to a mainly Jewish famiiy. He grew up with a father born in Hohenerns and an im-

keeper mother. The family lived in Ischl, where Arnéry attended the Gmunden

Gyrnnasium. Thus, his mernories constitute the rare document of a Jew kom the Austnan

provinces (nie D&S, 59). His family was completely wimilated and integrated into the

Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even though nobody had converted to Christianity in his

family, Christmas was celebrated in his house. Based on mal1 misundentandings, his

mother invoked Jesus, Joseph and Mary, while the souvenir photograph of his father,

who died at the fkont in the First World War did not show the face of a bearded Jew, but

an O fficer in the uniform of a Tyrolean Kaiserjaeger. Until he was nineteen years old,

Ham Mayer had never even heard about the existence of the Yiddish language

He obtained his degree in literature and philosophy in Vienna At the time his

Jewish heritage mattered M e , but the Nazis completely disregarded the extent or

absence of a Jew's religious convictions since the very notion of Jewishness s m c e d to

make one an enemy of the German Voik. With the Nuremberg laws of 1935, and then the

annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938. Hans Mayer understood eady enough that

the fate of any Jew confined by the Germans was sealed. In fact he recalls his moment of

shocked awareness conceming his threatened existence as a Jew:

7. It didn't begin until 1935, when 1 was sitting over a newspaper in a Vienna coffeehouse and was snidying the Nuremberg Laws, [. . .]. Society, concretized in the National Socialist German state, which the world recognized absolutely as the legitimate representative of the Geman people, [. . .] had just given a new dimension to what 1 had already known earlier [. . .] that I was a Jew. [. . .] If the sentence that society had passed on me had a tangible meaning, it could only be that henceforth 1 was a quarry of Death. [. . .] it was not a revolutionary clarnor but rather the carehilly considered demand of a people, compressed into a slogan, a war cry! (Mind 's Limits, 85)

Arnéry did not consider himself Jewish, for he did not know Hebrew, had little

familiarity with Hebrew culture, and was an agnostic. According to Levi, ''whoever is

not bom within the Jewish tradition is not a Jew, and cannot easily become one: by

definition, a tradition is inherited; it is the product of centuries; it cannot be fabricated a

posteriori" (The D & S, 103). And yet, in order to possess an authentic identity, one

needs dignity. For Améry, one who loses his or her dignity, is Iikewise exposed to

physical death.

From propaganda-infiicted degradation it was impossible to protect oneself, and

the only choice Ieft for Améry was to escape. His own way of eluding the state's abuse

was to accept his dedny, narnely, Judaism, and at the same tirne rebel against the

imposed choice. As a consequence, in 1938 he lefi Austria and immigrated to Belgium.

From now on he would be Jean Améry, almost an anagram of his original narne. The

maneuver was meant to serve as a temporary change of identity, a ruse which would

enable Am@ to live and work in Belgium. But this comparative anonymity was also

meant to protect Hans Mayer and to keep him dive. M e r a failed attempt to become a

writer, the Austrian humanist and critic joined the resistance movement in Belgium. In

1940 the Nazis conquered Belgium, and in 1943 Améry fell into the hands of the

Gestapo. He was asked to reveal the narnes of his comrades and his supenon or be

tomired. M e r his Jewish identity came to light, the Germans shipped him to Auschwitz-

Monowitz, the same Lager to which Primo Levi was sent a few months later (The D & S,

56).

On his release from Auschwitz, the anagram of disguise becarne permanent. His

narne now corresponded to his maimed identity and tomired body. No longer Hans

Mayer and d l that this identity once might have encompassed for him, the new name,

Jean Améry, held together the remaining fragments of that other identity. Thus, the

anagram provided a linguistic and textual link to the former Mayer as well as the later

Arnéry (Ezrahi, 29).

Constituting a double identity, the anagram signified a new language, French,

which Améry spoke for the rest of his life. ïhis pseudonym also expressed by its very

foreignness that something irremediable had happened to Jean Améry. But this

irremediable event meant as well that Hans Mayer no longer lived or even wanted to live,

because the assumed name signaled the death of Hans Mayer. Hence the new marker

always rerninded its bearer of his devastated p s t . "Suddenly the past was buried and one

no longer knew who one was" (Mind's Limits, 43). Améry dso Iinked the loss of

Ianguage to the forfeiture of his identity: "My identity was bound to a plain German

name and to the dialect of my more immediate place of origin" (Mind's Limiis, 43). He

would Wear his new name as a signifier of life after death. Mayer experienced not only

the particular loss of speaking in his native language, but also the general deprivation of

a context for language:

8. But since the day when an official decree forbade me to Wear the folk costume that 1 had worn almost exclusively fiom early childhood on, 1 no longer permitted myself the dialect. Then the name by which my fiends had always called me, with a dialect colonng, no longer made much sense either. It was just good enough for entry into the register of undesirable aliens at the city hall of Antwerp, where Flemish officiais pronounced it in such a strange way that 1 scarcely understood it. (Mind's Limits, 43)

The erasure of that language equaled the elirnination of his friends and his

community. He lost the capacity for a particular language because he was denied the

community that had sustained him. Mayer became silent and eventually died along with

his fnends, farnily and history: "And rny friends, too, with whom I had spoken in my

native dialect, were obliterated. Only they? Oh no: everything that had filled my

consciousness - kom the history of my country, which was no longer mine, to the

landscape images, whose memory I suppressed - had become intolerable to me

[. . .]" (Mind's Limits, 43-44).

Al1 the necessary institutional marken for his identity had been effectively

obliterated. He continues:

9.1 was a person who could no longer Say "we" and who therefore said "I" merely out of habit, but not with the feeling of full possession of my self [. . .] 1 had no passport, and no pst , and no money, and no history. There was only a line of ancestors, but it consisted of sad landless knights, stricken by an anathema In addition, they had been subsequently deprived of their right of residence, and 1 had to take their ghosts along into exile. (Mind's Lirnits, 44)

Améry made this historical burden the foundation for his testimony. Every tirne

he told what had happened to Hans Mayer at Auschwitz, his testimony referred to an

irreparable break, a death which persisteci, and which gained ground in life. As Jean

Arnéry believed that life had stopped with Hans Mayer's death at Auschwitz, al1 that

really remained was the continuing textual representation of Jean Améry. He

consequently rejected his new identity and embraced the death of Hans Mayer. Arnéry

cited the uniqueness of the death-camp experience at Auschwitz as the critical reason

behind his sense of etemal and universal social abandonment.

Although, he spent time in various Nazi prisons, out of al1 his Lager experience,

it was Auschwitz that influenced him the most, and his observations in Jenseits von

Schzdd und Siihne are confined to Auschwitz. AAer his liberation by the British in April

2945, he decided to return to Brussels, where he was to remain until his suicide on

October 17, 1978 (The D & S, 56).

Améry had always regarded writing as his vocation. However, for twenty years

d e r the events of the Hoiocaust he refbsed to publish for a Gerrnan audience. He

sustained his existence through writing exclusively for Swiss publications. From his

perspective as an observer, he watched the intellectual development of France and

Gemany. Only in 1968 did he enter the German scene with a number of essays. From

then on he visited Germany fiequently, made appearances on radio shows, and undertook

reading tours. But he remained in Brussels and read both Geman and French books (The

D & S, 59). This is the only way he could live, that is under the condition of remaining

marginal, without getting unduly involved in the formation of a literary scene and by

taking positions only on rare occasions. He would sporadically corne out to Say

somethîng at the meetings of the Berlin Academy of Arts, or to be the only one to raise

his voice in favor of Imel during the Yom Kippur Ï4ar of 1973 (Aman., Wagner, 2 15).

Améry did, however, undertake excursions to Gemany. Well-meaning faces,

strange faces, and always the question as to why he was still concerned with the past

greeted him. Every contact with the fmiliar language, particularly during the vacations

in the landscape of his childhood, made it painhilly clear that he did not belong there any

longer. His hlivels took him nowhere. He also visited the Salzkammergut, but he went

there to teminate his life when he decided the time had corne, deliberately staging his

death in a Salzburg hotel. Perhaps the tensions between his native country and himself

had become too unbearable. He wanted his work to be recognized for itself, and instead

eamed a form of detached respect because of his past. The Lager expenence that

dehurnanized him became merchandise for sale (The D & S, 59).

He was fi*-four yean old when his fint book, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne.

appeared in 1966. Despite the late start to his literary career, in the space of only a few

yean Améry established himself convincingly as a political and cultural essayist-cntic

and writer. in the series of essayistic autobiographical writings entitled Jenseits von

Schzrkd und Sühne, Améry used his moral convictions and artistic talents to write his

personal confession refracted through a prolonged period of meditation. This is the main

reason, as he observes himself, why the essays in his book are not m g e d according to

the chronological succession of everits, but in the order of their writing (&liind!s Limits,

16).

As 1 mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, an important aspect that Améry

presents, and to which he dedicates an entire chapter, is the position of the intellectual in

the concentration camp. His definition of the tme intellectual is indebted to the tradition

of the nineteenth-century humanistic gymnasium, although higher and forma1 Bildung is

a necessary but not sufficient condition. One may be intelligent as a lawyer, engineer, or

medical doctor, but that does not make one an intellectud. According to Arnéry, he

possesses a particular mental framework and system of reference, and draws his

associations fkom the r e a h of the humanities. He knows stanzas of great lyric poetry by

hem, and has acquired knowledge of the important Renaissance paintings or has studied

surrealism. He is also well informed about the history of music and philosophy (Mind's

Limits, 2).

Améry's intellectual lives a li fe saturated with culture and uses the words of the

great thinken and poets to develop a contemplative attitude towards life. That

conternplativeness can lead him to skepticism and to questions about how to understand

what he expenences. However, as far as mental courage and power are concemed, he is

probably neither stronger nor better than anybody else, and it becomes clear that in the

extermination camps it will be more difficult for him than for the non-intellectual. He is

not inclined to physical labor, and is given to thinking about whether he can and may

defend himself, to detemine which moral standard he should embrace, and which

general principles must form his basic thinking: 'Wot only was rational-analytic thinking

in the camp, and in particularly in Auschwitz, of no help, but it led straight into a tragic

diaIectic of self-destruction" (Mind's Limits, IO).

Améry writes at the beginnuig of the chapter, "At the Mind's Limits," that his

intention is not to give a documentary report about Auschwitz, but rather to confiont the

intellect with the Auschwitz experience (Mind's Limits, 1). Whatever one's definition of

the intellectual, one can readily agree with Améry's statement: at work in the Lager, the

intellectual man was much wone off than the uncultivated man. Besides his physical

weakness, he lacked familiarity with the tools and training that his worker or peasant

cornpanion often had. Moreover, he was tortured psychologically by an acute sense of

humiliation and Ioss of dignity. In Auschwitz-Monowitz the craftsmen were assigned

according to their trades. A machinist, for instance, was regarded to be a privileged

penon because he had the ability to work in the IG-Farben factory. Therefore, he was

considered to be a usefùl person in the Third Reich. The same principle applied in the

case of the electrician, the plurnber, the cabinetmaker, or the carpenter. A completely

different situation arose for those who had no practical skills:

10. The situation was different for the inmate who had a higher profession. There awaited him the fate of the businessman, who likewise belonged to the Lumpenproletariat of the camp, that is, he was assigned to a labor detail, where one dug dirt, laid cables, and transported sacks of cernent or iron crossbeams. In the camp he became an unskilled laborer who had to do his job in the open - which meant in most cases that the sentence was already passed on him. (Mind S Limits, 3)

This obvious disadvantage for the intellectual led ~hoever could lay claim to even the

smallest manual ski11 to declare himself a craftsman. Hence, the lawyer became a

bookkeeper, the joumalist becarne a typesetter and so on.

Apart from work, barrack Iife was also more painful for the intellectual.

Everyone waged a continuous war against everyone else. One could accept the punches

delivered by prison guards; however, completely unacceptable (due to their unexpected

and arbitracy nature), were the punches received nom fellow prisonen, to which a

civilized man did not know how to react. On this subject Améry relates to us a story in

one of his essays: a Polish criminal punched him in the face over some trifle. Because of

his sense of revolt against this unjustified action, Arnéry returned the blow as best as he

could. " M y dignity," he says, 'kas al1 in that punch aimed at his jaw; that in the end 1,

who was physically much weaker, succumbed to a nithless beating no longer had any

importance whatsoever. Hurting al1 over from the blows, I was satisfied with myself'

(Mind's Limits, 90). Levi's interpretation of this incident is significant:

I admire Arnéry's change of heart, his courageous decision to leave the ivory tower and go down into the battlefield, but it was, and still is, beyond my reach. 1 admire it: but 1 must point out that this choice, protracted throughout his post- Auschwitz existence, led him to positions of such severity and intransigence as to make him incapable of finding joy in Me, indeed in living. Those who 'trade blows' with the entire worid achieve dignity but pay a very high pnce for it, because they are sure to be defeated. Arnéry's suicide, which took place in Salzburg in 1978, like other suicides ailows for a nebula of explanations, but, in hindsight, the episode of the defiance of the Pole offen one interpretation of it. (The D & S, 110)

Camp life demanded both bodily strength and physicaf courage, two abilities with which

intellectuals are only very seldom blessed.

Besides lacking physical courage, the intellectuals did not even find friends. For

them it was physically and mentally impossible to use the camp's slang, for they suffered

From the humiliation brought about by the common Ianguage. For someone accustomed

to a more rehed mariner of expression it was almost impossible to acquire the inmates'

slang. Améry writes, "ûnly too well do 1 recall the physical disgust that regularly seized

me when an otherwise quite proper and sociable cornrade inevitûbly found no other form

of address for me than 'my dear fellow"' (Mind's Limits, 5).

The cultural divide between the intellectuals and the other inmates caused

communication problems that were hard to overcome as a result of the different

backgrounds of the two groups. The so-called Mussulman lost its customary usage

among the non-intellectuals, given the disappearance of a conscious line between good

and evil.

Améry characterizes Auschwitz as the death camp designed to produce more

than physical death. It created a surplus of death by exterminating the Jews physically,

intellectually, and symbolically. Arne describes this surplus of death through a bief

discussion of Nico Rost's book, Goethe in Dachair (Mind'S Litnits, 5). Rost, a political

prisoner in Dachau, lived through an ordeal which, while devastating and tortuous, was

not designed by the Nazis to exterminate him, but rather to p w s h him, even if that

punishrnent would accidentally lead, as Améry maintains, to Rost's own death. Rost's

suffering did not derive fiom pure hatred: racially, the Nazis perceived hirn as being

neither an infenor nor a pollutant. Therefore, Goethe in Dachau records Rost's capacity

to survive "as a subject" in the concentration camp. When Améry tried to read Rost's

book, he found himself unable to unite his own memories of death at Auschwitz to Rost's

memories of life at Dachau:

1 1.1 picked it up again d e r many years and read sentences in it that seemed quite dreamlike to me [. . .] When I contemplated these sentences and confionted them with my own camp memones, I was deeply ashamed, because 1 have nothing to compare with Nico Rost's admirable radically intellectual bearing. No, 1 defuiitely would have read nothing about Maimonides, even if - but this was hardly imaginable in Auschwitz - 1 had corne across a book on hirn [. . .] And more despainngly than scornfully 1 would have rejected the unreasonable demand that 1 accept classical Iiterature as a substitute for a food package (Mind's Limits, 5-6).

The inunediate response of shame occasioned by Rost's book indicates another

moddity, which Améry confiants us with as lie establishes his testimonial voice. He

engages his shame by recognizing the isolation of his expenences at Auschwitz. The

odds of Améry's dying at Auschwitz are cornmensurate with the odds of Rost's living at

Dachau. If the torturing of Améry does not kill him accidentally, then, the Nazis will

perfonn that act directiy. As Rost might accidentally die, Améry might accidentally live:

12. As I said, 1 was much ashamed when I read the book of my comrade from Dachau, untilI fïnally succeeded in exculpating myself somewhat. In doing so, perhaps 1 did not consider as much that Nico Rost worked in a relatively priviledged position as an orderly in a sick barracks (whereas I mysel f belonged to the anonyrnous m a s of the prisoners) as 1 did the decisive fact that the Dutchrnan had been in Dachau, not in Auschwitz. Indeed, it is not simple to find a common denominator for these two camps. (Mind's Limits, 6)

Améry's subtle explication of the difference between Auschwitz and Dachau forces the

reader to understand that at Dachau "the prisonen had in principle the possibility to

oppose the SS state, the SS structure, with an intellechial stnicture" (Mind's Limirs, 6). In

other words, Rost's imagination still functions to unite him subjectively with a

community and a social milieu. Arnéry's comparison reveals, then, that the business of

Auschwitz is exclusiveIy extermination and is aimed not just at the powers of the body,

but also at the powen of the mind (Amann, 19).

Arnéry also tells us that one evening, while rnrirching back from work through

the Polish mud, he tried to find in certain Holderlin poetry a message, which at other

times had shaken him. He did not succeed. The verses were there, resonated in his ear,

but they no longer said anything to him. Although the Holderlin stanza appeared to have

a mimetic relationship to the scene before Améry's eyes, the aesthetic charge, once

firmly attached to the words, had dissipated:

13.1 recall a winter evening when after work we were dragging ourselves, out of step, fkom the IG-Farben site back into the camp to the accornpaniment of the Kapo's menring "left, two, three, four," when - for God knows what reason - a flag waving in front of a hdf-finished building caught my eye. "The walls stand speechless and cold, the Bags clank in the wind," 1 muttered to myself in mechanical association. Then 1 repeated the stanza somewhat louder, listened to the words sound, tried to track the rhythm, and expected that the emotional and mental response that for years this Holderlin poem had awakened in me would emerge. But nothing happened. This poem no longer transcended reality. There it was and al1 that remained was objective statement: such and such, and the Kapo r o m ''left," and the soup was watery and the fiags are clanking in the wiod.

(Mind's Limits, 7)

This experience with the Holderlin quotation reinforced how dramatically Arnéry's

intellect had changed in the death camp, how his faculties no longer responded to the

literary prompters of the past. For him literature neither reawakened an imagined

identification from the past nor did it remind him of a possible future beyond the camps.

Therefore, his intellect had lost al1 its faith in humanity. As Améry points out, "In any

event, it is clear that the entire question of the effectiveness of the intellect can no longer

be raised where the subject, faced directly with death through hunger or exhaustion, is

not only de-intellectualized, but in the actual sense of the word dehumanized" (Mind's

Linlits, 7).

Because of the unique purpose of Auschwitz to de-intellectualize as well as to

dehumanize, extermination included the tactic of silencing Jewish intellectuals. For

Améry, this approach was an important element in the eradication of Jewish intellectual

life. At Auschwitz, this painhl memory left the Jewish intellectual mute (.4mann, 3 1).

Améry's well-known formulation: "No bridge led from death in Auschwitz to Dearh in

Venice " (Mind S Limits, 16) provides an insight into the discontinuity between culture

and genocide during the years of the Third Reich. The moral anarchy of the present

mocked the culture of the pst . Améry meant to Say that images of dying supported by

the pre-Holocaust imagination were eradicated by the unprecedented experience of the

gas chambers and crematoria The enemy now took over everything he valued and

considered important, the folk songs, the lake, and the forest. He was ousted from his

home country, which he, while fdihg, saw in a new destructive light. Suddenly since

everything he camed within himself was unbearably false, he had to destroy his home

country within. No matter where he tumed, nothing belonged to hirn any longer: "From

the Merseburger Zaubersprüche to Gottfkied Benn, fiom Buxtehude to Richard Strauss,

the spintual and esthetic heritage had passed over into the uncontested and uncontestable

ownenhip of the enemy" (Mind 'r Limits, 8). One could no longer claim German culture

as one's own possession, because this c l a h found no logical justification in the new

society ruled by the Nazis.

The advantage that non-intellertual pesons had over the intellectuals was the fact

that the former adjusted more easily to any given situation, since they did not try to

understand it. Questioning was the first wise dictum one had to forget in the Lager.

Seeking explanations demanded a futile and exhausting effort, even for Améry who

knew history, logic, and morality, and had already expenenced impnsonment and

torture. The process of understanding would waste precious energy that could be

invested more productively in the daily struggle against hunger and fatigue. As Levi

says, "Logic and morality [that] made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral

reality: fiom this came a rejection of reality which as a rule rapidly led the cultivated

man to despair" (The D & S, 1 15). Pondering upon the reality of everyday life was what

prevented the intellectual from adjusting to the demands of the camp. It was much easier

br a simple man accustomed not to ask questions about hirnse1L Besides, he often had a

trade or a manual ability that facilitated his incorporation in the camp's reality (Mind's

Limits, 24). The philosopher could also arrive at resignation to this fate. However,

according to Améry, the acceptance process took much longer. That is, it was only

gradually that he could perhaps break down the barrier of common sense that forbade

him to achowledge a radically unsettiing reality as truth, and he could h a l l y admit to

living in a monstrous world where cruel thuigs do exist and recognize that alongside

Cartesian logic there existed the logic of the SS.

14. Were not those who were preparing to destroy him in the nght, owing to the undeniable fact that they were the stronger ones? Thus, absolute intellectual tolerance and the methodical doubting of the intellectual becarne factors in his auto-destruction. Yes, the SS could cany on just as it did: there are no naturai nghts, and moral categones corne and go like the fashions. A Gemany existed that drove Jews and political opponents to their death, since it believed that only in this way could it become a full reality. And what of it? [. . .] The Via Appia had been lined with crucified slaves and over in Birkenau the stench of cremated human bodies was spreading. One was not Crassus here, but Spartacus, that was all. (Mind li Limits, 1 O)

To exacerbate the situation of the intellectuals, many were agnostics and Améry

observed what al1 ex-prisonen noticed: the non-agnostic, those who subscribed to any

type of belief, resisted better. They endured not only the Lager, but also life after their

release. Like Arnéry, Levi entered the Lager as a non-believer, and remained such until

he was liberated. Not only during the crucial moments of the selections, but also in

everyday life, these victims with a religious conviction or political ideology could cope

with the imposed conditions more effectively. Catholic or Refomed priests, rabbis of the

various orthodoxies, militant Zionists, Marxists and Jehova's Witnesses, al1 had in

cornmon the saving force of their faith. These people survived better and died with more

dignity than their nihilistic intellectual campmates. ''For the unbelieving penon reality,

under adverse circurnstances, is a force to which he subrnits; under favorable ones it is

material for analysis. For the believer reality is clay that he molds, a problem that he

solvesT' (Mind 'i Lhits, 14). Religious and political inmates, believers in general, did not

pay much attention to the others. There was no place for intelligence and education in the

camp. But they believed that their ~ o d ~ would help them. The non-believing

intellectuals, such Arnéry could not help being impressed by this kind of attitude.

Another problem that the intellectual had to confront was the enforced attitude

toward death. According to Arnéry, the mind in Auschwitz collided not merely with

death, but with the kind of dying peculiar to an extermination camp. Suddenly the

intellectual was lefl defenseless: "Death lay before him, and in him the spint was still

stirring; the latter confkonted the former and tried - in vain, to Say it straight off - to

exemplify its dignity9* (Mind S Limits, 16). He continues, saying that both fate and

suffenng disappeared from the vocabulary of Auschwitz, as did death itself, to be

replaced by the single fear, shared by all, of how one would die. Dying was omnipresent;

wherever one looked one could find it lurking about.

Entering the world of Auschwitz left Améry with a totally different view of the

past and fùture. He observes that one consequence of the camp expenence was "the total

collapse of the esthetic view of death" (Mind's Lh i t s , 16). The intellectual, especially

the one of German training, nourished by Schopenhauer, Wagner, Mann, and Rilke was

suddenly confkonted with a reality that left him paralyzed and without resources, waiting

for a response: "For death in its literary, philosophic, or musical form there was no place

in Auschwitz. No bridge led from death in Auschwitz to Death in Venice" (MindS

Limits, 16). But according to Langer, "traditionally, death in its literary, philosophical, or

musical foms has provided the imagination of al1 men, not merely intellecnials, with

metaphors for codronting and understanding our ultimate fate. Art and metaphysics have

collaborated in the past to derive eschatologies that make human destiny, even under the

Political inmates, such as members of the Comrnunist Party, who were atheists

most adverse circumstances, endurable to the individual" (Langer, 7 1). In spite of

everything that had happened to him, Améry tried to create, to establish a spiritual and

metaphysical attitude toward death, namely, against the reality of the camp, which

condemned the hopelessness of such an attempt. As a result, the intellectual, like his non-

intellectual cornrade, concerned himself not with death but rather with the process of

dying.

Améiy gives us the example of an SS-man who split open a prisoner's belly and

filled it with sand, and suggests that, if one considered how f' things could go, one

would not uselessly occupy oneself with whether he or she must die. but with how it

would happen. Thus, Améry shows us that the primary focus of the camp was indeed the

omnipresent process of dying. As he describes the content of the dialogues in Auschwitz,

we begin to realize how thoroughly camp reality disarmed traditionai notions of the

esthetic mode of life. "Inmates camed on conversations about how long it probably iakes

for the gas in the gas charnber to do its job. One speculated on the painfulness of death

by phenol injections. Were you to wish younelf a blow to the skull or a slow death

through exhaustion in the infirmary?" (Mind S Limits, 17). The notion of dying in

Auschwitz created a language that excluded any conception of normal, naturd death.

A major function of the literature of Auschwitz is to help us understand how the

moral. philosophical, and literary systems created by what Améry calls the "esthetic

mode of life" are discarded (Mind's Limits, 16). Those systems defined character, action.

and the tragic sense itself. The results were devastating. ''The axes of its traditional

frames of reference then shattered. Beauty: that was an illusion. Knowledge: that tumed

regarded their politicai ideology as being their oniy "God."

out to be a game with ideas. Death veiled itself in al1 its inscrutability" (Mind's Limits,

19). In other words, the intellect demonstrated itself to be of no use in the camp. Not only

was the intellechial destroyed physically but he had also proved himself to be no longer

capable of thinking. The Lager sûipped the pnsoners of their clothes and identities, while

it also robbed them of the capacity for rational discourse. However, Améry daims that

the camp experience was not entirely without value:

15. For we brought with us the certainty that remains ever unshakable, that for the greatest part the intellect is a ludus a d that we are nothing more-than homines ludentes. With that we lost a good deal of arrogance, olmetaphysical conceit, but also quite a bit of our naive joy in the intellect and what we falsely imagined was the sense of li fe. (MNid 's Limifs, 20)

The explanation that everything inevitably los its meaning after Auschwitz and that as a

result the loss of trust in the world overpowered the entire penon, beginning with one's

pst , is made clear. Such drastic expenences diminish the sense of human responsibility

insofar as eveqdung is drained of meaning.

Sartre, however, told the sumivon that they existed with their unique history and

had the opportunity to determine their fate (Mind's Lhits, 64). Améry may have felt

something simila. when he referred to Sartre, the politicia. and moralist, his revered

master and teacher. Mer the expenence of the concentration camps, Arnery considered

Existentialism the philosophy that saved bis life. His Jewish identity problem touched the

core of his dignity. Despite his constant efforts to clariQ his identity as a Jew, which are

mostly evident in the chapter "On the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew," he

was at times misunderstood by Jewish intellectuais but mainly by spiritual leaders, who

contested his right to cal1 himself a Jew. They were unable to understand why after al1

that had happened, he found it impossible to acquire a Jewish heritage and to idenrifi

with Judaism.

16. If today discornfort arises in me when a Jew takes it for granted, legitimately, that 1 am part of his community, then it is not because 1 don't want to be a Jew, but only because I cannot be one. And yet must be one. And I do not merely subrnit to the necessity, but expressly daim it as part of my person. The necessity and impossibility of being a Jew, that is what causes me indistinct pain. (Mind 3 Linras, 82)

AAer his experience in Auschwitz, Améry belonged to a marginal world that not

only complacently questioned hirn, but tried to make his attempts to explain what had

happened to hini conforrn to the world of appearances. It is hardly surprising that he was

not integrated in his native country's intellectual milieu, such as it was. His afiliation

with Austria, its landscape, language, and dialect is ambivalent and aiienated. His

country's disintegration pemeates his entire work. A double expulsion shaped Améry's

relationship to Austria. At first he was expelled fiom his home in the narrower sense of

the word. Upper Austria slowly transformed itself into a land of enemies. From there he

went to Vienna, a city he would escape eight years later.

By no means was he a Jewish child aware of being a stranger among the country

folk where he ended up. He did have to adapt and assimilate and was not even aware of

being different. Like everyone else he lifted his hat upon seeing the sumrner guests,

mainly Sews, who continued to mvel to Bad Ischl on their summer vacation. Like

everyone else he was happy when the resort tumed back into the village during the

winter months, and mt ic dances took place instead of five o'clock teas. He *tes:

The atrnosphere was happy and rustic. No one felt that he had to act like the entourage of the ladies and gentlemen nom the capital. Everyone taked, trampleci, spat as they liked. [. . .] In the early moming hours when outside only now and then the horse-drawn sled jingled through ice and snow, things could get rough in the smoke-filled rooms. Hatred, jealousy, and envy as well as anger kept

under control during the day made the floors tremble. Perhaps someone had spat into so-and-so's beer? (Ortlichkeiten, 12)

There was no nostalgie world for Hans Mayer like the one some Jewish Austrian authon

were able to draw on in spite of everything that had happened, which they cam-ed along

in their luggage, and loved to evoke in their memoin. Neither was there a grandfather

who told Hasidic stories, nor sweets and tea and a large family circle. Although Arnéry

could not fa11 back on any farniliar sense of belonging to a Jewish community, he had felt

fine surrounded by the dialect, literature, and the landscape of the province. The enemy

now took over everything he valued and considered important. He was ousted from his

home country and suddenly everything he carried within himself was unbearably false.

Nothing could last permanently. In the concentration camp he met a Jew from Vilnius

who asked him where he came fiom. He hesitated to answer. What were Hohenems,

Ischl, and Gmunden to the Polish Jew, he asked himself. His landmarks were not Iocated

on any Jewish migration route.

About the mother we only hear that she owned a tavern in Ischl-Eglmoos and

insisted on proper speech and table manners, about which her son could not have cared

less. His grandfather appean as a serious-rninded Jewish gentleman who occasionally

concemed himself with his grandson's education. There are three or four sentences about

his mother and his grandfather, but not once does he mention his fnends. In fact, real

nostalgia for Améry is equivalent to self-destruction since it consists of the

deconstruction of one's pst in relation to one's present bit by bit. The home country was

destroyed by man, and at the same time one erased the part of one's life connected with it

(Amann, 3 1).

Améry did not believe in the God of Israel, knew very little about Jewish culture,

and could not picture himself in a synagogue. Since being Jewish not only implies

having a Jewish name or origin, sharing a religious belief with the other rnernbers of the

cornmunity, participating in Jewish cultural and family traditions but also cultivating a

Jewish national ideal, Améry fomd himself in a difficult situation. He writes:

17. 1 was nineteen years old when I heard of the existence of a Yiddish language, although on the other hand 1 knew full well that my religiously and ethnically very mixed family was regarded by the neighbon as Jewish, and that no one in my home thought of denying or hiding what was unconcealable anyhow. I was a Jew [. . .]. If being a Jew irnplies having a cultural hentage or religious ties, then 1 was not one and can never become one. ( M i d S Limits, 83)

Améry argues that no one can become something that he or she cannot End in his or her

memories.

It was only with the publication of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 that he

understood what it meant to be Jewish. From that moment on he began his search for a

new identity. Judaism was in fact only a negation, a condition that tormented Améry to

the point of making him lose his human dignity. At the moment when he read the Laws,

he heard his death sentence (Mind's Limits, 133).

His tragedy derived from the impossibility of accepting a status he felt did not

apply to him. Moreover, he could not picture himself adapting to the new rules that

German society had suddenly irnposed with the publication of the Nuremberg Laws, the

latter forcing him to adopt the fdse identity of being Jewish. This is the reason for his

uncompromising rationalism by which he always judged himself and the world around

him.

Being Jewish meant to live with death, fearing it every single day. Being Jewish

was a synonym for Auschwitz, and it signified the forfeiture of one's roots based in

Austria that no longer existed. It entailed losing the language of Goethe that was now

destroyed by the barbaric behavior observed in the Lager and of course, surrendering

one's name and identity. He never thought of creating a new identity for himself within

the Jewish cornmunity where society had confined him. Since no childhood memory

linked him to the Jewish tradition, it always remained for hirn foreign and meaningless.

However, whatever his beliefs were in regard to belonging to the Jewish

community, one thing is certain: the death threat sounded for the first time with the

proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws, or as Améry writes himself, "formulated

differently: the denial of human dignity sounded the death threat" (Mind's Limits. 86).

He tells us the story of a fiee French worker who was chatting with a Jewish-French

concentration camp inmate: " 'I'm French,' the inmate said. Français, toi? Mais, tu est

juif, mon ami,' his countryman retorted objectively and without hostility; for in a mixture

of fear and indifferetxe he had absorbed the teachings of Europe's German masters"

(iMind's Limits, 88). In other words, the world approved the Nazi decision which made

k w s outcasts from the normal world. The degradation of the Jews represented for Arnéry

nothing less than the deprivation of life and di_gity (Amann, 39). Since the loss of

dignity was nothing less than the potentiai forfeiture of life, Améry tned to initiate acts

of resistance in order to regain his own sense of self-worth. He writes:

18. I took it upon myself to be a Jew, even though there would have been possibilities for a compromise settlement. I joined a resistance movement whose prospects for success were very dim. Also, 1 finally relearned what 1 and my kind O ften had forgotten and what was more crucial than the moral power to resist: to hit back. (Mind L; Limits, 90)

Certain issues ernerged for Améry in the post-war years. When violent acts and

reactions could no longer be legitimized, he saw himself confronted with the necessity

and impossibility of belonging somewhere. There were men and wornen for whom being

a Jew entailed positive definitions. They spoke Yiddish or Hebrew, celebrated the

Sabbath and the Jewish holidays. and went to the synagogue. They were Jews and proud

to be part of the Jewish comrnunity (Rubenstein, 88). Améry, on the other hand, felt that

he was a Jew only when he regarded the Auschwitz number tattooed on his Forearm,

something that touched the deepest roots of his existence.

There is no doubt that Améry tried to make sense out of the incomprehensible, to

dominate it rationally in order to be able to dcny every form of hope or illusion. In fact,

Crom this condition derived his radical and dramatic awareness of not belonging to the

environment and conditions that constituted the milieu in which he was forced to live.

With his Jewish kinsmen he felt practically no bond, for nothing linked him to the Jewish

community: no Jewish tradition, no language, no mernories. The environment in which

he had lived during his childhood and much later on was not Jewish, and in Arnery's

opinion that could not have been changed. One cannot become something that one feels

one is not obliged to be. However, these sentiments did not prevent him from embracing

solidarity with every threatened Jew in this world: "Some American country club, so I

hear, does not accept Jews as memben. Not for the world would 1 wish to belong to this

obviously dismal middle-class association, but the cause of' the Jews who demand

permission to join becomes mine" (Mind 'i Limits, 97-98). Améry's solidarity with any

Jew whose fieedom, equal rights, or physicd existence are threatened derived solely

kom his reaction to anti-Semitism. His solidarity became part of his identity. Aithough

he did not feel akin to the Jewish community, he viewed this reaction necessary in order

to regain his dignity. "Solidarity in the face of threat is al1 that links me with my Jewish

contemporaries, the beiievers as well as the nonbelievers, the national-minded as well as

those ready to assirnilate. For them that is perhaps Iittle or nothing at all" (Mind's Limits,

98). Anti-Semitism is what made a Jew out of Améry. As he says, "1 was, after dl, redly

in Auschwitz and not in Himmler's imagination" (Mind S Limitr, 98). He also believed

that anti-Semitism continues to exist and even prosper.

Al1 these feelings gradually contributed to his sense of recovering his individual

liberty and dignity. The concepts of estrangement and, at the sarne time, of liberty were

not contradictory for Arnéry, but related. Their coexistence was possible only in a

situation where the former referred to the projection of the self in the world surrounding

it and represented an individual and interior conquest wherein liberty was to be found.

The words of Améry and other witnesses of Auschwitz did elicit incredible

denials. Thus, in 1973, thirteen years afier the first edition of Améry's book, the

Frenchrnen Louis Darquier de Pellepoix and Robert Faunison publicly denied that the

Jewish Holocaust ever happened, thus triggering varying degrees of anger in public

opinion. In fact, Levi responded to this denial in the Corriere della Sera with the

following, "We know well certain mental mechanisms: the guilt is annoying or at Ieast

uncom fortable [. . .] Each one of us survivoa should deny [the guilt]. But we were there"

(Se questo è un uorno, 1973,3). Levi's declaration con£hns Améry's prediction. Both of

them. although in very different contexts, expressed theu indignation against those who

tried to escape their present guilt by denying historical facts.

Am@ knew he was living in denial, but he could not find any other way to resist

this strong feeiing of denying his Jewishness. The only way enabling him to escape his

heritage stood at odds with his beliefs. It involved accepting his own desthy, in this case,

being Jewish, and liberating himself nom the Nazi system which had stolen his identity

and deprived him of his past, his Heimat, without which man cannot live, even though he

is forced to do so. Heimat not only represented for Améry a country of origin, but it

mirrored above al1 the security given to man in an unknown world. It is the place of

one's childhood. Even given Arnéry's nihilistic rationalism, it is possible to find within

the characterization of Heimat a value that is not only concrete but also understandable.

When he descnbes the h c t i o n of homesickness and nostalgia, he digs beneath the

cynical surface and illustrates how these sentiments haunt a penon who is situated far

away from his native home and customs. Améry's nostalgia led to his suicide, premised

as it was on a form of auto-destruction.

In 1938 he lost his past in the midst of the ciiaos and enthusiasm of the Viemese

population during the annexation. The past suddenly disappeared, and one did not know

one's identity any longer. The content of his consciousness was erased; the history of his

country and the images of the landscape imprinted so deeply in his memory disappeared.

Even persecution is discussed exclusiveIy with regard to himselE we never find out what

happened to Améry's family and friends. Everything is lost, for in fact nothing could be

saved. The experience of oppression led to an extreme sense of loneliness.

Améry retained his coherence dong with his skepticism, even in the Lager. He

continued his vain search for truth in an abstract world, in the very society in which his

excniciating drama had begun. His feelings about being Jewish rnanifested themselves in

anxiety and anger. These negative emotions alienated him M e r nom a lost past.

B y constantiy analyzing the reality around him, Améry did not intend to h d a

means ofjustification, but rather to demonstrate the validity of the enlightenment theory

that would give him the oppomuiity to suMve his own physical and mental limitations.

In the second edition of Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne he writes:

19. In this context, to be sure, the concept of enlightenment m u t not be too restricted methodologicaily, for, as 1 understand it, it embraces more than just logical deduction and empirical verification, but rather, beyond these two, the will and the ability to speculate phenomenologically, to emphasize, to approach the Iimits of reason. [. . .] no matter how much 1 strive to attain the clarity necessary in order to !end them contour. However - and in this I rnust still penist -enlightenment is not the same as clarification. (Mind's Limits, xi)

Améry's contention that everything had lost its meaning after Auschwitz is compelling

and it explains his overpowenng loss of trust in the world. Such utter meaninglessness

sweeps away one's pst. Within his work, he tried to rebel against his past, against

history, against the incomprehensible and against al1 laws of ethical consciousness

destroyed by the Nazis. His trauma, the experience of the death camp, is presented not as

an object of knowledge but rather as an ethically witnessed experience.

5. DiReremes and Similarities: Jean Améry & Primo Levi

Survivor's mernoirs constitute a genre that by its very nature descnbes the differences

and similarities of one's experience. It shows how deeply intertwined the problcms of

individuality and representation are, since every sunrivor's story is utterly unique and yet

each also bears witness to a fate that, in one way or another, was endured by al1 those

caught up in the Nazi system of terror.

Writing on the Shoah has repeatedly underlined the antithesis between the unique

identity of' personal traits that made up pre-war Iewish existence, and the type of

Fragrnented identity spawned by the Reich's anti-Semitic legislation, culminating in the

camps. The experience of torture and the death camps gave Hans Mayer not only a new

narne but also a new identity, one that forever erased the consciousness that had

constituted and understood itself through its relationship to culhue. Améry recognized

that such a conscioumess was permanently linked to the torture and death of Hans

Mayer. Just as Jean Arnéry was not able to Save Hans Mayer fiom torture and the death

camp, no Other came to liberate Améry £iom his memory (Amann, 35). It would torture

him until his death in 1978. ""Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured [. . -1.

Anyone who ha suffered torture never again will be able to be at ease in the world, the

abomination of the annihilation is never extinguished. Faith in hurnanity already cracked

by the h t slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again" (Mind's

Limits, 53). As Levi pointed out regardhg Améry, "torture was for hirn an intemiinable

death" (me D & S, 40).

Wiîh n o h g left to draw upon except his permanently re-experienced ordeal that

anyone who has been tortured remains tortured, Améry's post-Auschwitz identity

became forever tied to the new category of the intellectual in Auschwitz. This of course

explains his wounded reaction to Primo Levi, whom he called the forgiver, not because

Levi ever forgave the Nazis but because for Levi, personal identi ty remained pro foundly

linked to representation, not only representation ofone's biographical experiences, but

the representation of one's culture. This is the central rneaning of the chapter "II Canto

d'ulisse" in Se questo è un uomo. Directly contrary to Améry's expenence, culture did

help Levi maintain a sense of identity and even of continuity with his pre-camp sel[

Levi's recollection of Dante's great canto did not provide a bridge to Auschwitz; instead

it offered him a momentary bridge back to Italy, to the culture where he felt he belonged.

To uphold an individual identity is to be comrnitted to representation. However, there are

extreme instances where a distrust of representation can work towards the destruction of

a penonal identity. This is the case with Hans Mayer's pre-war Austrian culture and Jean

Améry's fiozen moment in the SS torture cellar at ~reendonk." It effected a radical

transformation from an intellectual, assimilated Austrian f ew into a victimized Jew,

whose sorrow and inexpungible memones were the common link with the lives of al1

Jews devastated by the Shoah. Améry denies and discredits the effort of sustainhg a

continuity of penonal identity nom the pre-war era through the experience O i the Shoah,

as reflected in the change of his name.

Of Améry's comment about Levi, to the effect that he would be 'the forgiver,'

Levi writes:

'O Breedonk was the Iast headquarten of King Leopold in Belgium. Under the German occupation it became a srnail concentration camp. In July 1943, when Améry got arrested as being part of a small Geman-speaking organization within the Belgian

1 don? consider this either an insult or praise but an imprecision. 1 am not inclined to forgive, 1 never forgave our enemies of that time, nor do 1 feel I can forgive their imitators in Algena, Cambodia, and South e c a , because 1 know no human act that cm erase a crime. I demand justice, but 1 am not able personally, to trade punches or r e m the blows. (The D & S, 1 10)

Levi often mentions that, like Améry, he did experience a sudden upsurge of pride when

he tried to punch Elias, the dwarf, since he was insulting Levi and pushing him against

the wall. Levi consequently tried to defend himself and kicked him. As a result Elias

roared, not fiom pain but from wounded dignity, and then gripped Levi's throat and

sqceezed until he saw signs of the iatter's imminent loss of consciousness. Without a

word, he finally let Levi go and left. Améry, as 1 have indicated above, experienced a

similar incident, though he reacted in a completely different manner. Through his

physical reaction he felt he could regain his hurnan dignity. Two similar incidents

con front us with two entirely different reactions. Perhaps, if Levi had sentenced himself

to exile and the loss of a national identity, and would have learned to return the blow, he

would have harbored, like Arnéry, those resentments to which the latter dedicated a long

essay full of anguish and anger (Mind S Limits, 2 1).

Nowhere does reality take such a direct possession of people as in the camp, with

the result that the intellectual who aims specifically at contemplation fiom a distance is

lost without bearings. Levi also juxtaposes the point of view of the eyewitness. It is tnie

that the intellectual had a more difficult time than others, not only because Ii fe in the

barracks was a heavier burden for him, but above al1 because of the lack of paper and

books that u t i l then had seemed indispensable. ùi that respect? there is indeed a big

difference between the camps. Nico Rost, fondly remembered by Améry, can write and

resistance movement, he \vas taken to Breedonk where he was tortured.

think about the importance of Holderlin. Destruction was the order of the day in Dachau,

but inmates did at least have access to a Iibrary: "In Dachau there was a camp library; for

the ordinary inrnate of Auschwitz a book was something hardly still imaginable" (Mind S

Limits, 6 ) . Although being an intellechial was a disadvantage in Auschwitz, there are a

few exceptions. 1 have already shown how culture sometimes played a usefbl role for

Améry. Yet another example of this can be seen in the incident when an orderly from the

sick barracks offered him a plate of mreetened grits, and how he rapiuly devoured them.

reaching a state of spintual euphoria. That act of human kindness was comected with the

image of the good Joachim Ziemssen fiom Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Therefore,

culture did serve, in this particular situation, to reflect a more positive outcome. Cultural

legacies occupy an even more instrumental position in Levi's Se questo è un uomo in the

chapter ''The Canto of Ulysses." His high regard for culture served him well and might

have gone as far as to Save him. It made it possible for hirn to reestablish a link with the

past by rescuing him and reinforcing his identity. Culture convinced hirn that his mind

had not ceased to function. Being an accomplished chemist aiso undoubtedly protected

hirn £iom one of the selections for the gas chamber.

One could pose the question: was Primo Levi an intellectual? Indeed Améry's

statement excludes scientists and technicians h m this community. According to hirn,

that category should be restricted to those fiom the fields of Ietters and philosophy. in

The Drowned and the Saved, Levi defends himself by asking rhetorically, "Was

Leonardo da Vinci, who called himself 'a man without letters,' not an intellectuaI?' (1 13)

As Levi says, he does not kmw if at that time in the Lager he was an intellectual. in any

case, if he became an intellectual afterwards, the experience that he drew on from the

Lager helped hirn to do so. The Lager was indeed a university and taught him to look

around and to rneasure men. From this point of view, Levi's vision of the world around

hirn is different to that of his companion and antagonist Améry.

As a result, different interests and orientations are manifested in their writings:

Levi's feeling of having to bear witness, and Améry's theme of the philosopher of the

spirit who could find no means of expression in Auschwitz and was reduced to being a

diminished scholar from whom the forces of history have stripped away his country and

identity. Therefore, one cm Say that culture was useful in the Lager in those cases where

it helped to establish a bond with the pst , with a companion, and served to keep the

mind alive and healthy. However, it was of little use as far as orientation and

understanding go. From this standpoint, as Levi writes, his expenence as a foreigner was

identical to that of the German Arnéry ( (Te D di S, 1 15).

If we perceive a particular attitude of beionging to Judaism when we think about

Primo Levi, convenely, we sense a total alienation From cultural meanings when we look

at Jean Arnéry. He inherited a modem Jewish intellectual identity which was not only

secular in nature but also hlly assirnilated to a non-Jewish Viennese culture. himo Levi

characterizes Arnéry's social background as being inherently German, and only

ambivalently related to Jewishness and Judaism.

He did not consider himself Jewish: he did not know Hebrew or Hebrew culture, did not need the Zionist doctrine: religiously he was an agnostic. Neither did he feel able to construct for himselfan identity he did not have: that would have been a falsification, a masquerade. Whoever is not born within the Jewish tradition is not a Jew, and cannot easily become one: by definition, a tradition is uiherited; it is the product of centuries, it cannot be fabricated a posteriori. And yet, in order to Live an identity - that is, dignity - is necessary. For him the two concepts coincide [. . .] Now, to him, as to many 0th- German Jews who like

him believed in Geman culture, the German identity was denied [. . .]. (nie D & S, 103)

Facing the ntionality with which Améry always exarnined himself and the world around

him, we corne to undentand the principal difference between the two authors.

Alongside the rationality of the intellectual, Améry remarks what al1 ex-prisoners

observed that the non-agnostic believen of al1 types and denominations managed to

resist more effectively. Levi writes:

Like Arnéry, I too entered the Lager as a non-believer, and as a non-believer 1 was liberated and have lived to this day; actually, the experience of the Lager with its fnghtful iniquity has confirmed me in my laity. It has prevented me. and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence or transcendent justice. Why were the rnoribund packed in cattle cars? Why were the children sent to the gas? ( n e D & S, 1 17)

The believen' faith, in fact, held the key to a tomorrow, to a place in heaven or on earth

where justice ultimately won the battle between good and evil, or would win in a certain

unspecified future. On such an observation, the opinions of Arnéry and Levi coincide, for

both of them believed and continued to state that life in the Lager was altogether more

difficult for non-believers. They lacked the faith that would have given them the

opportunity to tind a means of spiritual support. The believen saw every injustice

perpetrated against human beings as the express will of God. Whatever faith one had

helped the given penon to survive better, or at Ieast to die with dignity. I f suffering were

inexplicable, a victim would soon be overwhehned by a feeling of total desperation. in

7Ee Drowned and the Saved, Levi relates the story of a barber, a proud supporter of

Stalin, who was outraged by the skeptical pessimism of his interlocutor because, as a

firm believer, he could never give way to despair (1 19). Stalin was his strength. In the

sarne way, Améry recalls the story of a young Polish priest, who completely ignored the

prevalent foreign languages and started to preach the word of God in Latin, "'Voluntas

hominis ad molum,' he said and glanced sorrowfully at a Kapo who was just passing by

and who was feared for his brutality. 'But God's goodness is immeasunble and thus it

will triumph"' (hfind's Lirnits, 13). The believers did not live in constant disappointment.

They had hope.

Another aspect to consider is the linguistic trauma undergone not only by non-

German speakers but also by native German speakers who helplessly suffered the

violence done to their mother tongue. In The Drowned and the Saved, Levi brings up

Améry as an example of a German native speaker who deeply felt the corruption of the

German language:

Améry-Mayer affhns also that he suffered from the mutilation of language [. . .] and yet his language was German. He suffered fkom it in a different way than we who, not knowing German, were reduced to the condition of deaf mutes: in a way, if 1 may put it like this, that was spiritual rather than material. He suffered from it because German was his language, because he was a philologist who loved his language: just as a sculptor would suffer at seeing one of his statues befouled or mutilated. Therefore the suffering of the intellectual was different in this case fiom that of the uncultivated foreigner. For the former, the Geman of the Lager was a language he did not understand and this endangered his Me; for the latter, it was a barbaric jargon that he did understand but that scorched his mouth when he tried to speak i t One was a deportee, the other a stranger in his own country. ( n e D & S, 108-1 09)

Since the "I" could not speak as it once did, the newly determined bbmass" at Auschwitz-

Monowitz was re-fomed around the incapacity for speech. in Auschwitz the victims

experienced the breakdown of this faculty insofar as they were tied to speech. The

Iewish intellectual's isolation would henceforth be complete.

For both German and non-Gerrnan native speakers, language was damaged and

therefore could no longer function as an ally or a tool through which one could seek to

survive. By reminding us that the intellectual tended to suffer more deeply in the camps

and that the linguistic obstacles he found in Auschwitz caused pain and confusion, Levi

invites the reader to make an even greater effort to comprehend his story and to accept

that his survival came as a result of a hurtful struggle, both physical and spintual.

Throughout his career as a Holocaust memoinst, Levi employs a defamiliarizhg strategy

of constantly using foreign words, which he could have easily translated into Italian. By

doing so, he achieves one of his communicative goals, that of forcing the reader to relate

to the given simation. In Se questo e un uomo examples abound; starting with "Wieviel

Stück?' and '"Arbeit Macht Frei." The continuous use of foreign words contributes to the

reader's feelings of discornfort, inevitably leading to an identification with the author's

plight (Cinanni, 86).

The barbaric behavior and life-style of the Lager effectively undermined

language, the essential means of human communication. The last resources of hope and

kindness were exhausted through the linguistic deterioration represented by the 'new

language' prevdent in the Lager. In this respect, both Améry and Levi shared similar

expenences.

The most important single aspect that differentiates the two survivon is in their

attitude towards life after the Lager experience. Levi did not live in a state of constant

disappointment with mankind. On the contrary, he always tried to harbor and even

reuiforce his unconditioned faith in humanity, since faith and optimism were the two

main factors which heiped him cany on and Live his life as a Holocaust victim. He did

not perceive himself as one who had died in the camps although their victims had

become an essential part of his Life and memory. In contrasting Améry's position with his

own, Levi states, ''Chce again it must be observai, moumfûlly, that the injury cannot be

healed: It extends through tirne [. . .] It is not without horror that we read the words left

us by Jean Am&y [. . .] Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be able to be at

ease in the world [. . .]" (The D & S, 24-25). Levi counts himself among the saved, the

living, even while he emphatically remernbers the 'drowned*' the dead.

As a Holocaust survivor, Arnéry never succeeded in liberating himself from an

inherent skepticism, which dominated him al1 his life, and he continued to perceive the

world as dominated by the law of the strongest, as reflected in the jungie of the Lager.

He justifies his feelings of resentment by claiming that they are the result of a long

persona1 and histoncal development. Since for him, Austria and Germany were an

irretrievably lost area of the globe, he avoided any contact with them. not wishing to

incur the danger of contamination. He *tes, 'Tor me the potato-field and war-ruins

Gemany was a lost area of the globe. 1 avoided speaking its, my language and chose a

pseudonyrn with a Romance ring." (Mind S Limits, 65). Améry retained these feelings of

resentment throughout his entire life and they are mostly visible in his literary works.

Levi, on the other hand, just wanted to bear witness. His intention is not to point an

accusing finger at the perpetratos of the Holocaust, even though he makes it clear that he

cannot forgive the past. The conflicting nuances in the respective treatrnents of

forgiveness on the parts of Améry and Levi lend it an arnbiguously charged meaning, in

which context is everything.

Améry and Levi, although both Holocaust survivors, differ in their personal

experiences and the driving motive behind writing their manoirs. The former uses his

literary talent as a form of rebellion agallist his pas& against history, and against the very

Feelings he was constantly in danger of miscomprehending. Still, he persists in

attempting to elaborate a rational explanation for what had happened in an attempt to

comprehend hilly what had made him suffer so much. The latter, on the other hand,

writes in order to bear witness and to heal his spiritual wounds. Nonetheless, in each

instance, their traumas are presented as a Holocaust testimony.

6. Conclusion

Throughout this thesis my intention has been to examine critically two representative

works from Austrian and Italian literature, both purporting to bear witness to the

Holocaust, and more specifically, Auschwitz. 1 have consequently indicated the

historical, social, political and ideologicai considerations necessary for a theoretical

understanding of Améry and Levi's Holocaust s u ~ v o r ' s memoirs.

Literature represented by Holocaust testimony produces a new kind of survival

mernoin, which generate the potential to change political ideologies and social

institutions. As history, testimony must indict the perpetraton and reveal their crimes

while as memory, testimony must reunite the victims and reintegrate the found survivon

and listenen into a community in which the survivor's testimony is the focal point for

fiiture ethical and political practice. Because the survivor addresses more than the mere

purview of the law, the survivor's testimony and memory ofken appear excessive, given

the requirements ofthe law. Since crimes have been cornmitted for which any penalty is

always less than adequate, the testimony signifies an ethical production which

continually laments the lack of adequate or even minimal compensation. As Levi

maintains in nte Drowned and the Saved: 'One cannot expect from men who have

known such extreme destitution a deposition in the juridical sense, but sornething that is

at once a lament, a curse, an expiation, an attempt to justify and rehabilitate oneself: a

liberating outburst rather than a Medusa-faced truth" (nie D & S, 53).

A political ethic imposes an obligation on the m e r who Listens. This is the case

for both Arnéry and Levi. The listener is obliged either to forfeit the experience of

hearing the nwivor's testimony or to invest it with an ethical status. Challenging the

testimony with such a status emphasizes that the friture of social relations is at stake in

the act of bearing witness (Rosen, 45). Therefore, the survivoh testimony revises the

social relations once again so that it becomes an ethical exchange between the s u ~ v o r

and the listener. Secause the survivor adds a quality of extmne persona1 interest to the

testimonial act, the act of testifjmg transforms the survivoh social position by focusing

on his or her place between the living and the dead, hence memory and history. In order

to write swival memoin, and thus history, one requires testimony as a condition to bear

wimess. This requirement, present in both Améry and Levi's work, reinforces testimony

as a social power, and in this capacity, testirnony acts politically to change the nature of

history (Rosen, 67).

Survival mernoirs often pose the danger for collapsing the significance of the

Holocaust into the larger category of World War II, or h m a more iiberal perspective,

into the category of genocide. The relegation or attribution of forgetfuiness to memory

binds the faculty to a superficial representation. The survivor experiences memory as a

permanent scar which must be repeatedly revealed to the listener and which possesses

the risk of "constnicted" forgetfulness (Rosen, 78). To sorne extent, western society as a

whole has participated in the Nazi victimizers' desired forgetfihess. Geoffrey Hartrnan

has described the ironic way in which such cornplicity works in his edited collection,

Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective: "Perhaps, then, the mechanics of

cornmernoration are being used to achieve a disburdening of memory, to construct

forgetfuiness, and so unfominately to forestall real, continuous thought about

catastrophic events that mark o u - recent past" (1). in other words, western societies

remember in order to forget inflicting the womd by displacing it with "the form of a

story [. . .] a stereotype, crystallized, perfected, adorned, installing itself in the place o r

the raw memory and growing at its expense" (The D & S, 12).

The survivor's testimony is accorded a special place in literature, which requires

also the listenen of the testimony to remember, without having actual mernories of the

Holocaust itself. Here, the survivor and the Iistener corne face to face in the ethical

concept to bear witness. By remembering the trauma as it occurred, survivon like Améry

and Levi brhg the testimony to an ethical interaction with the listener. Likewise, by

Iistening to the swivor's testimony, the listener moves fiom the space of forgetfulness to

question the same ethical dilemma: How could the Holocaust possibly happen? At the

level of testimony, then, the survivor's personal interest must be the desire for memory to

be shared and relived through the listener (Hartman, 8). The implication of such an

argument suggests that ethical action denves from memory. Holocaust suwivon know

their testimonial acts as an ethical force against the forgetting of the Jewish victims, and

the listeners of these testimonies must also mark the hearing of such testimonies as

remembrances for the victims. Again, the non-traumatized Iistener, reader, or belated

witness must mark the consciousness with the injunction to remember always the

Holocaust victims: never to forget.

Only disciplined, critical remembering will enable us to resist the erasure of fact

and circumstance effected by time, by ideology, and b y the natural human impulse to

forget. The Final Solution drarnaticaliy enforces its impact through its inhuma.

dimensions. Levi and Améry and others like them have defied a cnidely persona1 trauma

by opening up and sharing their own experience with us. In The Book of Lazighter and

Forgetting, Milan Kundera observed that the "struggle of men against power is the

stmggle of memory against forgetting" (Kundera, 3). Human remembrance, whether

individual or collective, does not comtitute an inert archive. Such memories are

variously composed of drearns, hopes, and illusions. They are fundamental evidence of

our essential being and Our impulse is always to defend them against al1 corners. The

men and women who lived through the Holocaust will cope with and manage their

memones as they must, to render present circurnstance endurable and to authenticate the

present self. Collective memory, created out of shared experience, will go on functioning

in much the sarne way.

Whatever the ments of novelists and historians, it is still the suwivors themselves

who convey most tellingly and most succinctly the horron of the Holocaust. In the

darkest hours Jews found themselves confionted with ultimate and absolute despair. On

the walls of a Hasidic synagogue in Cologne, one can read, "1 believe in the sun even

when it is not shining. 1 believe in love even when 1 do not feel it. 1 believe in God even

when He is silent" (Liptzin, 81). 1 have chosen to end my work with this quotation, and

thereby to avoid any premature closure that would attempt to resolve or explain the

unthinkable. One can only hope that this inscription pays fitting tribute to the investment

of intellect and imagination, faith and doubt, pain and resiliecce, infonning the works of

Primo Levi and Jean Améry. Ln spite of victimuation, trauma and suicide, they not only

lefi behind an unforgettable textual legacy bearing witness to what it means to

experience Auschwitz and despite everything survive, but also insured that ethical

consciousness itself continues to survive in our memories.

[. . .] Ma le madri vegliarano a preparare con dolce cura il cibo per il viaggio, e lavarano i bambini, e fecero i bagagli, e all'alba i fili spinati erano pieni di biancheria infantile stesa al vento ad asciugare; e non dimenticarano le fasce, e i giocaîtoli, e i cuscini, e le cento piccole cose che esse ben sanno, e di cui i bambini h m o in ogni caso bisogno. Non fareste anche voi altrettanto? Se dovessero uccidervi domani col vostro bambino, voi non gli dareste oggi da mangiare? (Womo, 13)

Per gli uomini vivi le unita del tempo hanno sempre un valore, il quale è tanto maggiore, quanto pi6 elevare sono le risorse interne di chi le percorre; ma per noi, ore, giomi e mesi si riversavano torpidi da1 futur0 ne1 passato, sempre troppo lenti, materia vie e superflua di cui cercavarno di disfarci al piu presto. Conchiuso il tempo in cui i giomi si inseguivano vivaci, preziosi e irreparabili, il h o ci stava davanti grigio e inarticolato, come una barriera invincibile. Per noi, la stona si era fermata. (Uomo, 105)

Mi rendo conto e chiedo venia dei difetti strumirali del Iibro. Se non di fatto, come intenzione e come concezione esso e nato gia fin dai giomi dei Lager. 11 bisogno do raccontare agli "altri", di fare gli "altri" partecipi, aveva assunto fia di noi, prima della liberazioi2e e doppo, il carattere di UR impulso irnmediato e violenta, tanto da nvaleggiare con gli altri bisogni elementari: il libro è stato scritto per soddisfare a questo bisogno; in primo luogo quindi a scopo di liberazione intenore. Di qui il suo carattere fiammentario: i capitoli sono stati scritti non in successione logica, ma per ordine di urgenza. (Uomo, 9- 1 O)

Degli undici della Infektionsabteilung, fù Somogyi il solo che mon nei dieci giorni. Sertelet, Cagnolati, Tawarowski, Lakmaker e Dorget [. . .] sono morti qualche settirnana pi& tardi, nell'infermeria russa prowisoria di Auschwitz. Ho incontrato a Katowice, in aprile, Schenck e Alcalai in buona salute. Arthur ha raggiunto felicemente la sua famiglia, e Charles ha ripreso la sua professione di maestro; ci siamo scambiati lunghe lettere e spero di poterlo ntrovare un giorno. (Uomo, 153)

La confusione delle lingue è una componente fondamentale del modo di vivere di quaggiti; si è circondati da una perpetua Babele, in cui tutti urlano ordini e minacce in Iingue mai prima udite, e gui a chi non afferra a volo. Qui nessuno ha tempo, nessuno ha pazienza, nessuno ti da ascolto; noi ultimi venuti ci raduniamo instintivamente negii angoli, contro i muri, come fanno le pecore, per sentirci le spalle materialmente coperte. (Uono, 33)

[Resnyk] mi ha raccontato la sua stona, e oggi l'ho dimenticata, ma era certo una storia dolorosa, crudele e commovente; ché tali sono tutte le nostre storie, centinaia di rnigliaia di storie, tutte diverse e tutte piene di m a tragica sorprendente necessità. Ce le raccontiamo a vicenda a sera, e sono m u t e

in Norvegia, in Itaiia, in Aigeria, in Ucraina, e sono semplici e incomprensibili corne le stone della Bibbia Ma non sono anch'esse stone di una nuova Bibbia? (Uomo, 58-59)

Es fing erst an, als ich 1935 in einem Wiener Cafe über einer Zeitung sass und die ebm driiben in Deutschland erlassenen Nümberger Gesetze studierte. [. . .] Die Gesellschaft, sinnfallig im nationalsozialistischen deutschen Staat, den durchaus die Welt als legitimen Vertreter des deutschen Volkes anerkannte, hatte [. . .] rneinem m e r schon vorhandenen, aber damals nicht folgenschweren Wissen, dass ich Jude sei, eine neue Dimension gegeben. [. . ] Wenn das von der Gesellschaft über mich verhiingte Urteil einen greifbaren Sinn hatte, komte es nur bedeuten, ich sei fûrderhin dem Tode ausgesetzt. [. . .] Es war [. . .] kein revolutioniirer Radau, sondem die in einem Slogan - Kriegsnif! - verdichtete, wohldurchdachte Forderung eines Volkes. (Siihne, 133-135)

Aber den Dialekt habe ich mir nicht mehr gestatten wollen, seit dem Tage, da eine arntliche Bestimmung mir verbot, die Volkstracht ni tragen, in die ich von m e r Kindheit an fast ausschliesslich gekleidet gewesen war. Da hatte acch der Name nur noch wenig Sinn, mit dem mich die Freunde stets in mundartlicher Tonfabung gerufen hatten. Er war gerade noch gut für die Einschreibung ins Register unewünschter Auslihder am Antwerpener Rathaus, wo ihn die flihischen Beamten so fremdartig aussprachen, dass ich ihn kaum verstand. (Sühne, 77)

Ich war ein Mensch, der nicht mehr "wiwir" sagen komte und d a m nur noch gewohnheitsmiissig, aber nicht im Gefiihl voilen Selbstbesitzes "ich" sagte. [. . .] Ich hatte keinen Pass und keine Vergangenheit und kein Geld und keine Geschichte. Nur eine Ahnenreihe war da, aber die bestand aus traurigen Rittem Ohneland, getroffen vom Anathem. Man hatte ihnen noch nachtraglich ihr Heimatrecht entzogen, und ich rnusste die Schatten mitnehmen ins Exil. (Sühne, 78)

1 0. Anders war die Lage dessen, der einen Intelligenzberuf hatte. Ihn envartete das Schicksal des Kauhanns, der gleichfalls nun Lumpenproletariat h Lager gehorte, dass heisst : er wurde einem Arbeitskornmando mgeteilt, wo man Erde aufgnib, Kabel legte, Zementsiicke oder Eisentraversen transportierte. Er wurde im Lager ni einem unqualifizierten Arbeiter, der das Seine irn Freien zu Ieisten hatte, womit meist schon das Utteil über ihn gesprochen war. (Sühne, 20-2 1)

1 1. Ich nahm es nach lahren wieder nu Hand und las dain Satze, die mich traumhaft genug anmuteten. [. . .] Ais ich diesen Satzen nachging und sie mit meinen eigenen Lagererinnenmgen ko&ontierte, war ich tief beschàmt, denn nichts habe ich Nico Rost bewundernswerter. radikal geistiger Haltung an die Seite zu stellen. Nein, ich hiitte ganz bestimmt nichts iiber Maimonides gelesen, selbst wenn mir, was fieilich in Auschwitz kaum denkbar war, ein einschlagiges Buch in die Hiinde gefalIen wiire. [. . .] Und die Zumutung, unter Umstaden kiassische Literatur als Ersatz fûr ein Lebensmittelpaket ni

nehmen, haette ic h mehr vemvei felt als hohnisch nirückgewiesen. (SUhne, 24)

12. Ich schmte mich, wie gesagt, sehr, als ich das Buch des Kameraden aus Dachau las, bis es mir schliesslich gelan& mich einigemassen ni diskulpieren. Dabei dachte ich vielleicht nicht so sehr dran, dass Nico Rost in vergleichsweise bevomigter Position als Pfieger in einer Krankenbaracke arbeitete, wahrend ich selbst zur anonymen Masse der Hafilinge gehorte, als an die entscheidende Tatsache, dass der Hollwder sich in Dachau befunden hatte, nicht in Auschwitz, Es lassen sich nhl ich in der Tat diese beiden Lager nicht so einfach auf einen gerneinsamen Nemer bringen. (Sühne, 24)

13. Ich ennnere mich eines Winterabends, als wir uns nach der Arbeit im SC hlechten Gleichschritt unter dern entnervenden "Links zwei, drei, vief der Kapos vom IG-Farben-Geliinde ins Lager ninickschleppten und mir an einem haibfertigen Bau eine a u Goa weiss welchem Grunde davor wehende Fahne auffiel. "Die Mauem stehn sprachlos und kalt, irn Winde klirren die Fahnen", murmelte ich assoziativ-mechanisch vor rnich hin. Dann wiederholte ich die Strophe etwas lauter, lauschte dem Wortklang, venuchte dem Rhythmus nachnispiken und envartete, dass das seit Jahren mit diesem Holdenn-Gedicht für mich verbundene emotionelle und geistige Mode11 erscheinen werde. Nichts. Das Gedicht transzendierte die Wirklichkeit nicht mehr. Da stand es und war nur noch sachliche Aussage: so und so, und der Kapo brüllt "links", und die Suppe war ddfuin, und irn Winde klirren die Fahnen. (Sühne, 26)

14. Hatten jene, die ihn ni vernichten sich anschickten, nicht vielleicht recht gegen ihn, auf Grund des unbestreitbaren Faktums, dass sie die Stiirkeren waren? Die gmdsatzliche geistige Toleranz und der methodische Zweifel des Intellektuellen wurden so ni Faktoren der Autodestnrktion. Ja, die SS konnte es treiben, wie sie es tat: Es gibt kein Naturrecht und die moralischen Kategonen entstehen und vergehen wie die Moden. Ein Deutschland war da, das Juden und politische Gegner in den Tod trieb, da es sich nur auf diese Weise glaubte verwirkiichen ni konnen. Und was war weiter? [. . .] Die Via Appia war gesaumt gewesen von gekreuzigten Sklaven, und &ben in Birkenau verbreitete sich der Gestank verbrannter Menschenleiber, Hier war man nicht Crassus, sondem Spartacus, das war alles. (Sane , 32)

15. Wir haben namlich die für uns fürderhin unverrückbare Gewissheit mitgenommen, dass der Geist auf weitesten Strecken tatsachlich ein ludus ist und wir nichts sind, besser gesagt, vor dem Eintrin ins Lager nichts waren als homines ludentes. Damit ist manche Überheblichkeit von uns abgefallen, mancher metaphysische D u e l , aber auch manch naive Geistesfkeude und manch fiktiver Lebenssinn. (Sühne, 45)

16. Wenn heute Unbehagen in mir aufsteigt, sobald e h Jude mich mit legitimer Selbstvetstandlichkeit einbezieht in seine Gemeinschaft, dam ist es nicht d a m , weil ich kein Jude sein will: nur weil ich es nicht sein k m . Und es doch sein mus. Und mich diesem Miissen nicht bloss untewerfe, sondem es

ausdrtickiich anfordere ds einen Teil meiner Penon. Zwang und Unmoglichkeit, Jude ni sein, das ist es, was mir eine undeutliche Pein schafft, (Sühne, 130)

17. Ich war neunzehn Iahre ait, als ich von der Existenz einer jiddischen Sprache vemahm, wiewohl ich andererseits genau wusste, dass meine religios und ethnisch vielfach gemischte Familie den Nachbam als eine jüdische galt und niemand in meinem Hause daran dachte, das ohnehin Unverschleierbare ableugnen oder vertuschen ni wollen. Ich war Jude. [. . .] Meint also Jude sein einen kulturellen Besitz, eine religiose Verbundenheit, dam war ich keiner und kann niemals einer werden. (Suhne, 13 1 )

18. Ich nahm es auf mich, ein Jude ni sein, wiewohl es gewisse Moglichkeiten zu einem Arrangement gegeben haette. Ich ging den Pakt ein mit einer Widerstandsbewegung, deren realpolitische Aussichten sehr genng waren. Auch habe ich am Ende wiedererlemt, was ich und rneinesgleichen oft vergessen hatten und worauf es mehr ankam als auf moralische W iderstandskraft : zurücknischiagen. (Süline, 1 4 1 )

19. Hierbei darf fieilich der Begriffder Auf lc lhg methodologisch nicht zu enge gefasst werden, dem er urngrei ft, wie ich ihn verstehe, mehr als nur logische Deduktion und empirische Verifikation, vielmehr, über diese beiden hinaus, den Willen und die Fahigkeit nir phiinornenologischen Spekulation, nu Empathie, zur Annahening an die Grenzen der Ratio. [. . ] wie sehr ich mich auch bemiihe um jenes Licht, das sie erst nir Dimension macht. Aber - und auch hierauf ist noch ni beharren - Aufklaning kt nicht gleich Abklaning. (Sühne, 13)

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