If This Is a Man

Primo Levi was an Italian graduate chemist who joined the anti-Mussolini partisans in 1943, was arrested and, as a Jew, was deported to Auschwitz. His book, If This Is a Man, is a memoir of his time there. As he says in the introduction, he had the ‘good fortune’ to be sent there in February 1944, after the German Government had decided—due to a shortage of labour—to ‘extend the working life of prisoners before elimination’, and to improve somewhat their conditions. It is not, therefore, a litany of SS brutality and summary executions; in many ways, it is worse. There have been many accounts of the awful conditions in the camps, but the seeming mundaneness of the day-to-day, week-to-week grinding torture of the routine, lends authenticity to Levi’s account. It is horrifying but compelling reading. I’m tempted to say that older schoolchildren ought to be obliged to read the book so they may understand what racial and cultural intolerance can lead to.
 
I was once acquainted with an Italian survivor of the camps. I have mentioned in these posts events from my time playing with an English rock band in Rome in the summer of 1965. For us it was a time of wonder, but we encountered not a little name-calling from the Italians since three of us, me included, had regulation Rolling Stones type long hair—regarded by the locals as outrageous. The staff at The Piper, the famous night club where we played from 10:30 pm to 3:30 am seven days a week were, on the whole, very friendly. They of course had seen many bands come and go, and were familiar with the more flamboyant and bohemian set in Rome who frequented the club; long hair was no big deal to them. 
 
I struck up an acquaintance with the bouncer, Franco. He was a solid man of about 40. Not tall, or broad, or imposing, but with a definite air of controlled strength; a man you would want on your side. At the time I could not speak more than a few words of Italian and he had no English, so we conversed in the time-honoured fashion using mainly sign language. One day, he called me over and invited me to look at a 20 Lira coin he had removed from his pocket. He pointed to the ‘heads’ side—an anonymous female profile—took a pin from his jacket and wiggled his finger in his ear to indicate that the pin should be placed in the ear on the coin. Doing this, since the ear happened to be at the exact centre of the coin, he could balance it and spin it round. Such were the sundry ways we amused ourselves.
 
There was some more joshing around, and then without warning he rolled up the shirtsleeve on his left arm and showed me a number tattooed there. I recognised it immediately and realised that he had been in the camps during the war. However, I did not know until today that even though there were many concentration camps in Germany, Poland, and even Italy, it was only at Auschwitz-Birkenau that the prisoners were tattooed with numbers. Franco had been sent to Auschwitz. He must have experienced the same horrors as Levi—they might even have known each other.
 
At the time I was upset by the revelation, but the real significance escaped me. From Levi’s book, I now know, and cannot stop thinking about it.