I first read Primo Levi for a school project when I was 16, his words,
"If This is a Man" and "The Truce" touched me very deeply. He is an
exceptional writer, his prose is clear, lucid and devastating and the
topics he covers are of such a hideous nature, the crimes so
fundamentally awful, that it requires an author of such qualities to
convey these images and messages.
"The Drowned and the Saved" is a
different book but one no less powerful and impactful than his earlier
works. He speaks with the benefit of 40 years further time to consider
the implications of what happened during the Third Reich and he is no
less clear in articulating the reasons behind what happened, the lessons
he learned from his experiences about the nature of human beings and
most interestingly towards the end, how his literature has been received
by those persons (the German people) who bear the responsibility for
the crimes committed by the Third Reich.
This book should be read
by everyone involved in politics today. It is a warning call from a
voice lost too early in tragic circumstances but who can speak with
authority and clarity about things which we may believe are impossible
in our current time but which many of those same Germans who bear
responsibility would have had the world believe they were not aware
either.
"For us to speak with the young becomes ever more
difficult. We see it as a duty, and at the same time as a risk: the risk
of appearing anachronistic, of not being listened to. We must be
listened to: above and beyond our personal experiences, we have
collectively been the witnesses of a fundamental, unexpected event,
fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It
took place in the teeth of all forecasts; it happened in Europe.
Incredibly, it happened that an entire civilized people, just issued
from the fervid cultural flowering of Weimar, followed a buffoon whose
figure today inspires laughter, and yet Adolf Hitler was obeyed and his
praises were sung right up to the catastrophe. It happened, therefore it
can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say."
"Neither Nietzsche not Hitler nor Rosenberg were mad when they intoxicated themselves and their followers by preaching the myth of the superman, to whom everything is permitted in recognition of his dogmatic and congenital superiority; but worthy of meditation is the fact that all of them, teacher and pupils, became progressively removed from reality as little by little their morality came unglued from the morality common to all times and all civilisations, which is a common part of our human heritage and which in the end must be acknowledged."
