By Henry Maitles
SEVENTY-SIX years after the liberation of Auschwitz on this day in 1945, the Nazi Holocaust is still very much an issue. Of all the works on the Holocaust, those by Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who survived Auschwitz, are amongst the most powerful as a warning.
From his first work, If This is a Man, in 1947, to his last works, The Drowned and the Saved and Moments of Reprieve, in 1986, Levi waged his personal battle against the Nazis and their attempts to destroy memory; he is one of the best spokespersons for those millions without voice. Levi is certain of two things about the Holocaust; it happened and it can happen again and it started in Germany but it can happen anywhere.
Levi’s humanity and his spirit of resistance shine through his works. Whether it is individual or collective resistance at any level to the Nazis, Levi admires and articulates it, even as he realises the terrible cost of it and questions his own abilities to be involved. He explains and describes how the spirit of humanity that the Germans were so keen to destroy continually shone through. It is this unquenchable spirit that makes Levi's work so moving and such a chronicle of the camps. It is impossible not to be moved by these examples of courage and goodness in the face of fascist barbarism.
Yet he does not give the easy impression of an unstinting human nobility. Although his work is filled with this, Levi has no illusions as to its universality. In one moving phrase, he describes Nazism's effect on the prisoners as being something that "degrades them, it makes them similar to itself". In the upside down world of the camps, all that could be called good in the "normal" world, was of little use in terms of survival. In a chilling phrase, he writes that the law in Auschwitz, amongst starving prisoners, was "eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbour".
Levi holds a special fascination. The world is a significantly poorer place without him. Indeed, the very nature of his death has even been an issue for debate. Many assume it was suicide and give a number of reasons for it (a mixture of short-term depression and long-term guilt); others reject this and argue that it was a tragic fall. Yet, suicide or accident, his writings and life as a survivor are what counts.
Levi's writing is not about the past but is also full of relevance about today and has vital lessons for tomorrow. With crisis throughout the world, fascism again raises its head. Levi's works are cries of "never again"' against it. It is important that we keep these memories in focus and keep the Holocaust in public view as an example of what society in crisis is capable of. We have a duty to ensure that the kind of horrors Primo Levi so eloquently warns us about are never allowed to be forgotten.
Henry Maitles is Emeritus Professor Of Education, University of the West of Scotland
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