Primo Levi the grey zone

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make others understand our experience?

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what we commonly mean by ‘understand’ coincides with ‘simplify’: without a profound simplification the world around us would be infinite

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[the world] undefined tangle that would

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defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions

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we also tend to simplify

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history

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different historians may understand and construe history in ways that are

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incompatible with one another

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this simplification is justified, but the same does not always apply to simplification itself

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which working hypothesis, useful as long as it is recognised as such and not mistaken for reality

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who today reads (or writes) about the history of the Lager reveals the tendency to

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separate bad from good

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they do not like

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ambiguity

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where power is exercised by few or only one against the man, privilege is born and proliferates

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even against the will of the power itself

Question 9

it is the grey zone, poorly defined, where the two camps of

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masters and servants both diverge and converge

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the grey zone possesses an incredibly complicated internal structure and contains within

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itself enough to confuse our need to judge

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the nazism of the final years could not do without

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these external auxiliaries

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before discussing the motives that impelled some prisoners to collaborate to some extent with the Lager authorities, however,

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it is necessary to declare the impromptu dence of issuing moral judgement on such human cases.

Question 13

certainly the greatest responsibility lies with

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the system the very structure of the totalitarian state

Question 14

the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators (…)

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is always difficult to evaluate

Question 15

[prisoners] in general they were poor devils like ourselves, who worked full time like everyone else but

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who for an extra half- later of soup were willing to carry out these and other ‘Tertiary’ functions: innocuous, sometimes useful, often invented out of the whole cloth

Question 16

[prisoners] they were rarely violent but they tended to develop a typically

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corporate mentality and energetically defined their ‘job’ against anyone from below or above who might covet it

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[prisoners] their privilege, which at any rate entailed supplementary hardships and efforts,

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gained them very little and did not spare them from the discipline and suffering of everyone else

Question 18

[priv prisoners] their hope for life was substantially the same as that

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of the un privileged

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[prisoners] they were corse and

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arrogant but they were not regarded enemies

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mans domination over man is inscribed in our genetic

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patrimony as gregarious animals

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there is no proof that power is

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intrinsically harmful to the collectivity

Question 22

the power of which the functionaries of whom we are speaking disposed, even if they were low-ranking, such as kapos of the work squad, was in substance

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unlimited; or, more accurately put, a lower limit was imposed on their violence in the sense that they were punished or disposed if they did not prove to be sufficiently harsh

Question 23

[Kapos] were free to commit the worst atrocities on their subjects

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as punishment fro transgression, or even without any motive whatsoever

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until the end of 1943 it was not unusual for a prisoner

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to be beaten to death by a Kapo without the latter having to fear any sanctions

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later on, when the need for labour became more acute, were a number of limitations introduced:

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the mistreatment of the Kapos were allowed to inflict on the prisoners could not permanently diminish their working ability

Question 26

Thus the Lager, on a smaller scale but with amplified characteristics, reproduced the hierarchical

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structure of the totalitarian state, in which all power is invested from above and control from below is impossible

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only in the lager was the restraint from below non-existent and the power of these small satraps

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absolute

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[who became a Kapo] he common criminals, taken from prisons to whom a career as a torturer

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offered an excellent alternative to detention

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[who became a Kapo] political prisoners broken by five or ten years of suffering

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or in any case morally debilitated

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[who became a kapo] later on it was jews who saw in the particle

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of authority being offered them the only possible escape from the final solution

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[who became a Kapo] but many as we mentioned, spontaneously aspired to power, sadists(...)

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the position of privilege coincided with the possibility of inflicting suffering and humiliation on those below them

Question 32

the Lager reproduced the microcosm of totalitarian society: in both, without regard to ability and merit

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power was generously granted to those who were willing to pay homage to hierarchic authority thus attaining an otherwise unattainable social elevation

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power was sought by the many among the oppressed who had been contaminated

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by their oppressors and unconsciously strove to identify with them

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I do not know, and it does not interest me to know,

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whether in my depths there lurks a murderer

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but I do know that I was a guiltless

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victim not a murderer

Question 36

there exist grey, ambiguous

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persons ready to compromise

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it remains true that the majority of oppressors, during or (more often) after there deed, realised that what they were doing or had done was

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iniquitous, or perhaps experienced doubts or discomfort, or were even punished, but this suffering was not enough to enrol them among the victims

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in short, they were saved by luck and there is not much sense in trying to

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find something common to all their destinies, beyond perhaps their initial good health

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false to maintain- that they all and always followed the behaviour expected of saints and stoic philosophers

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in reality, in the vast majority of cases, their behaviour was rigidly pre ordained

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choices (...)

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was reduced to zero

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Soderkommandos (special squads)

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extract corpses from the chambers, to pull gold teeth from he jaws, to cut women's hair, to sort and classify clothes, shoes, and the contents of luggage, to transport the bodies to the crematoria and oversee the operation of the ovens, to extract and eliminate ashes

Question 42

these special squads di not escape everyone else's fate

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on the contrary the SS exerted the greatest diligence o prevent any man who had been part of it from surviving and telling

Question 43

in October 1944 the last squad rebelled against the the Ss blew up one of the crematoria and was

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exterminated in an unequal battle that I will discuss later on

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no one speaks willingly about their

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frightful condition

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the special squads were made up largely of

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jews

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one is stunned by this paroxysm of perfidy and hatred:

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it must be jews who put the jews into the ovens; it must be shown that the jews (...) bow to any and all humiliation, even to destroying themselves

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the special squads being barbers of a horrendous secret were kept rigorously apart from

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the other prisoners and the outside world

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the intrinsic sorrow of this human

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condition has imposed a sort of reserve on all the testimony, so that even today it is difficult to conjure up an image of "what it meant" to be forced to exercise the trade for moths

Question 49

the existence of the squads had a meaning, a message

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"we the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours"

Question 50

images like this astonish because they conflict with the image we have of man

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himself, coherent, monolithic

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compassion and brutality can

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coexist

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there is no proportion between the pity we feel and the extent of the pain by which the pity is aroused

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a single Anne Frank excites more emotion than the myriads who suffered as she did but whose image has remained in the shadows

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no the girl must die if she were older, it would be a different matter

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But she's only sixteen: she can't be trusted

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and yet

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he does not kill her with his own hands

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Muhsfeild was not a compassionate person; his daily ration of slaughter was studded with arbitrary and capricious acts

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(...) had he lived in a different environment and epoch, he probably would have behaved like any other common person

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[Mushfeld] it is enough to place him too, although at its extreme boundary, within the

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grey band, that zone of ambiguity which radiates out from regimes based on terror and obsequiousness

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why did they accept that task?

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why didn't they rebel?

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not all did accept; some did rebel knowing they

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would die

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those who from one shift to the next preferred a

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few more weeks of life (what a life) to immediate death

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I believe that no one is authorised to judge them

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not those who lived through the experience of the Lager and even less those who did not

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I would invite anyone who dares pass judgement to carry upon himself with sincerity, a conceptual experiment: let him imagine if he can that

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he has lived for months or years in a ghetto, tormented by chronic hunger, fatigue, promiscuity, and humiliation; that he has seen die around him, one by one (...)

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now nobody can know for how long and under what trials his soul can

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resist before yielding or breaking

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each individual is so complex that

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that there is no point trying to force his behaviour, all the more so in extreme situations

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nor is it possible to

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force one's own behaviour

Question 65

Chaim Rumkowsi

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director of Jewish Charities (...) president of a ghetto

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Rumkowski passionatley

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loved authority

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[Rumkowski] soon came to see himself as in the role of absolute but enlightened

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monarch, and he was certainly encouraged along his path by his German masters

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from these famished citizens of his, Rumkowski aspired to obtain not only obedience and respect

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but also love: in this respect modern dictatorships differ from the ancient ones

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[rumkowski] he had a carriage of drawn by a skeleton nag in which he rode through the streets of his minuscule kingdom

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streets crowded with beggars and postulants. he had a regal mantel and surrounded himself with court flatterers

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[Rumkowski] he had adopted the oratorical technique

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of Mussolini and Hitler, they style of inspired recitation, the Pseudo-colloquy with the crowd, the creation of consent through subjugation and plaudit

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[rumkowski] his attitude sprang from his condition as a small tyrant

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impotent with those above him and omnipotent with those below him

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feeling beneficent is gratifying

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even for a corrupt satrap

Question 73

Biebow

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was not a ferocious beast.

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[Biebow] was not interested in creating useless suffering or punishing the jews for the sin of Being Jewish, but he

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was interested in profiting from contracts (...) the torment in the ghetto touched him, but only indirectly

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[Biebow] he wanted the slave workers to work and therefore he did not want them

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to die of hunger: his moral sense ended there

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Biebow, a small jackal too cynical to take race demonology seriously, would have liked to put off forever the dismantling of

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the ghetto, which for him was an excellent deal

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neither the letter not the special carriage were able to save

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Chaim Rumkowski, the king of the Jews from the gas chamber

Question 78

who was Rumkowski?

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not a monster, nor a common man; yet many around us are like him

Question 79

[Rumkowski] it seems to me that in his story it is possible to recognise in an exemplary form the almost physical necessity with which political

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coercion gives birth to that ill-defined sphere of ambiguity and compromise

Question 80

at the foot of every absolute throne, men such as Rumkowski crowd in order to grab their

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small portion of power

Question 81

power is like a drug:

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the need for either is unknown to anyone who has not tried them, but after the initiation (...) can be fortuitous

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[power like a drug] need for ever larger doses is born

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as are the denial of reality and the return to childish dreams of omnipotence

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intoxication of power is so powerful as to prevail even under conditions

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seemingly designed to extinguish all individual will

Question 84

Rumkowski's story is the sorry, disquieting story of the Kapos and Lager functionaries

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the small hierarchs who serve a regime to whose misdeeds they are willingly blind

Question 85

Rumkowski a symbolic and compendiary figure, must be placed in this band of

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half consciences

Question 86

every defendant helps his judge, even though he does not want to, even if he lies, because mans

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capacity to play a role is not unlimited

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we are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature

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we hybrids folded from clay spirit

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like Rumkowski we are too dazzled by

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power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility

Question 89

willingly or not we come to terms with power

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(...) forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death and that close by the train is waiting