PRIMO LEVI, THE ITALIAN RESISTANCE & THE HOLOCAUST

Joseph de Ca'th Lon is enjoying his last day in Turin. He has visited emblematic places that recall the figure of one of the most important authors of Italian literature, Primo Levi, the author of Jewish origin who survived the horror of the extermination camps.

In this era of polarization and radicalization that we live in, it is important to analyze the most recent European history and work to avoid falling into the same mistakes that led the continent to two bloody world wars and some states to civil wars, the consequences of which still endure to this day. Reading Primo Levi, as The Grandma would say, is a must.

Primo Michele Levi (31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include: If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo, 1947, published as Survival in Auschwitz in the United States), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories, each named after a chemical element which plays a role in each story, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written.

Levi was born in 1919 in Turin, Italy, into a liberal Jewish family.

In July 1934, at the age of 15, he sat the exams for the Liceo Classico D'Azeglio, a lyceum (sixth form or senior high school) specializing in the classics, and was admitted that year. The school was noted for its anti-Fascist teachers, among them the philosopher Norberto Bobbio, and Cesare Pavese, who later became one of Italy's best-known novelists.

Levi continued to be bullied during his time at the Lyceum, although six other Jews were in his class. Upon reading Concerning the Nature of Things by English scientist Sir William Bragg, Levi decided that he wanted to be a chemist.

He enrolled at the University of Turin to study chemistry. As one of 80 candidates, he spent three months taking lectures, and in February, after passing his colloquio (oral examination), he was selected as one of 20 to move on to the full-time chemistry curriculum.

In July 1938, a group of prominent Italian scientists and intellectuals published the Manifesto of Race, a mixture of racial and ideological antisemitic theories from ancient and modern sources. The treatise formed the basis of the Italian Racial Laws of October 1938. After their enactment, Italian Jews lost their basic civil rights, positions in public offices, and their assets. Their books were prohibited, and Jewish writers could no longer publish in magazines owned by Aryans. Jewish students who had begun their course of study were permitted to continue, but new Jewish students were barred from entering university. Levi had matriculated a year earlier than scheduled, enabling him to take a degree.

In 1939, Levi discovered a passion for mountain hiking. A friend, Sandro Delmastro, taught him how to hike, and they spent many weekends in the mountains above Turin.

In June 1940, as an ally of Germany, Italy declared war against Britain and France, and the first Allied air raids on Turin began two days later. Levi's studies continued during the bombardments.

In July 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III deposed Mussolini and appointed a new government under Marshal Pietro Badoglio, which prepared to sign the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies. When the armistice was made public on 8 September, the Germans occupied northern and central Italy, liberated Mussolini from imprisonment, and appointed him as head of the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state in German-occupied northern Italy. Levi returned to Turin to find his mother and sister in refuge in their holiday home called 'Lo Saccarello' (literally, the Sackcloth) in the village of Chieri in the hills outside Turin.

The Italian resistance movement became increasingly active in the German-occupied zone. Levi and some comrades took to the foothills of the Alps and, in October, formed a partisan group in the hope of being affiliated with the liberal Giustizia e Libertà. Untrained for such a venture, he and his companions were arrested by the Fascist militia on 13 December 1943. Believing he would be shot as an Italian partisan, Levi confessed to being Jewish. He was sent to the internment camp at Fossoli near Modena.

Fossoli was taken over by the Germans, who started arranging the deportations of the Jews to eastern concentration and death camps. On 21 February 1944, on the second of the transports, Levi and other inmates were transported in twelve cramped cattle trucks to Monowitz, one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex.

Although liberated on 27 January 1945, Levi did not reach Turin until 19 October 1945. After spending some time in a Soviet camp for former concentration camp inmates, he embarked on an arduous journey home in the company of former Italian prisoners of war who had been part of the Italian Army in Russia. The long railway journey home to Turin took him on a circuitous route from Poland, through Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Austria, and Germany -an arduous journey described especially in his 1963 work The Truce- noting the millions of displaced people on the roads and trains throughout Europe in that period.

After four decades of writing works that are now considered universal, Primo Levi died on 11 April 1987.

More information: BBC

 ...how important it is in life not necessarily 
to be strong but to feel strong, 
to measure yourself at least once, t
o find yourself at least once...

Primo Levi