On this tragic day when we commemorate the pogrom of October 7, what would Primo Levi have written about this horror?
A new national library was recently inaugurated in Jerusalem, opposite the Hebrew University. On the walls, a sort of stone work in the form of a Talmudic page with the treatise in its center, and the banks of commentaries on either side.
In a bay window at the entrance to the library, photos of the hostages were installed, with for each and every one a book which constituted a reference, a life companion, a memorable read. Way to keep them alive. The campaign is called “A Book for Every Hostage,” and would like to leave the seats empty and the books open for the return of the detainees.
The choice of Nehama Lévy, this young girl to whom so many people are attached? Or the choice we made for her? A book by Lova Eliav, pioneer, trade unionist, kibbutznik. We are so surprised by this choice for such a young girl. Lova Eliav represents so much of old Israel.
We realize that most of the hostages are people of the book. A chair and a book were stored for each hostage, a choice made most of the time by family members.
For one, the choice fell on Liberty by Jonathan Franzen. For the other, a book by Jody Picoult, American novelist “I wish you were here”. The other again Why bad things happen to good people by Hen Marx. For the third, War and peace by Tolstoy. On the chair of Haïm Péri, aged 79, from the Nir-Oz kibbutz, a children’s book that he was reading to his granddaughter. To the baby Bibas, taken from Nir-Oz, a children’s book Where is Pluto? by the poet Léa Goldberg. For Dor Kaplan, aged 68, we chose A hundred years of solitude by Garcia Marques. For some of the hostages, those who were freed in the first exchange, the corresponding chairs were removed. This is the case of a young man for whom we had chosen If it’s a man by Primo Levi.
Many readers among the hostages. What are they doing today? What do they do? Is there a paper companion who holds their hand in the solitude of their dungeon? How many of them remained alive? How do they wake up every morning with no other plan than the hope of surviving? How do they cope with a condemnation proclaimed every morning and reiterated every evening?
The day after October 7, as luck would have it, in Israel, Primo Levi’s book If it’s a man be published in a new translation.
We suddenly brought the two events closer together. Primo Levi says that while he was in Auschwitz, he kept having the same dream where he told the story of his deportation, but no one believed him. He tried and tried again throughout his life, without succeeding. And he ended up wondering if it was worth it, if it was good to ensure that the memory of what had happened to him lived on in one form or another. He even wondered, when addressing his readers, how to establish a connection with men and women who have been stripped of their humanity. He was to realize quite quickly that this link did not exist, that it was impossible, but that he had to try to weave it through writing, through thought, through actions. That it was an absolute duty, a promise for the missing, and a pact for the future.
The assault of October 7 a year ago, the massacres perpetrated, the detention of hostages brought back images of the Shoah. The vision of these children from the kibbutzim trying to escape from Hamas killers by hiding inside a wardrobe, or under a bed, or in a shelter, or in a sealed room, nourished these connections, even when a The majority of public opinion could be shocked.
The comparison was abusive, of course, but one of the lessons of Primo Levi is that the whole process begins with a dehumanization of the enemy, and at the end of the chain, we invariably find the “Lager” (the Nazi camp). . If the first reflex leads to refraining from comparing, the second always finds advantages in comparison.
Primo Levi’s book actually invites these connections. When it was first published, everyone wondered about the enigmatic nature of the title. If it’s a man Was he addressing the executioners? Was it a question of wondering about the little humanity that the conscience of the executioners was able to harbor? Do we still remain a man when we have gone through these massacres? At the same time, the executioners were absent from the book. They didn’t appear. They did not interest the author. What was required was the community of victims, the way in which they exposed themselves to each other, the depth of humanity that each could awaken in themselves to withstand the ordeal.
If it’s a man deals in fact, he says it himself, with the human and social architecture of the camp, with inmates of all origins and backgrounds, with simple souls especially who found themselves confronted with the loss of friendship, fraternity , compassion and saw themselves transformed from the inside, incapable of resisting the war of all against each.
In this most cruel battle, everyone was isolated, alone with themselves. Morality, good, evil, just, unjust, family, destiny, community, being Jewish, nostalgia, the future… All of this belonged to the world outside the camp, and anyone who linked to it reduced his chances of survival. Levi perceived a divide between two groups inside the camp: the castaways and the survivors. The survivors were those who had managed to develop all kinds of resilience techniques. The castaways were not necessarily the weakest. They were the ones who let themselves go. They didn’t really die anyway. They faded, they dissolved, they softened. And the author remained discreet about the conditions of the death of his fellow prisoners. “Many things have been said and done between us, but we should not keep them in memory.”
In this story which will become one of the most read and translated testimonies in the world, he tells of the mothers who prepared toys for the children and accompanied them on the last journey into the unknown. But he shows no mention of his feelings.
Primo Levi writes: “A woman had spent the entire journey at my side, pressed like me between one body and another body. We had known each other for a long time, and misfortune had struck us together, but we didn’t know much about each other. We then said to each other, in this decisive hour, things that are not said between living people. We said goodbye, and it was brief: each took leave of life while taking leave of the other.”
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