People talk about ‘life-changing’ books, but I prefer to think of ‘life-enriching’ ones. I’ve been moved by several true and fictional accounts of the holocaust but If This is a Man and Truce epitomise the best of holocaust literature because they are so beautifully written and based entirely on a survivor’s incredible memories. The books filled me with awe for a man who endured such terrible emotional and physical deprivation and humiliation yet can write about his experiences without bitterness or even much anger.
Written within a few months of his return to Italy in 1945, Levi’s prose is calm, measured and rich with appalling detail. Nazi slave labour camps, arbitrary ’selections’ for the gas chambers and debilitating illness don’t make for ‘enjoyable’ reading, but I did not want to put the books down. Ingenious methods of tackling daily hardships are described with clarity and, amazingly enough, humour. A fascinating array of disparate characters is lovingly sketched, especially in The Truce, where Levi has exchanged the camps with their immediate threat of extermination or starvation, only to find himself on an interminable and dangerous journey back to his beloved Italy. In the refugee camp at Bogucice Levi shares a dormitory with ‘The Moor from Verona’.
‘He was a great knarled old man with huge bones like a dinosaur, tall and upright on his haunches, still as strong as a horse, although age and fatigue had deprived his bony joints of their suppleness. His bald cranium, nobly convex, was encircled at its base with a crown of white hair; but his lean, wrinkled face was of a jaundice-like colour, while his eyes, beneath enormous brows like ferocious dogs lurking at the back of a den, flashed yellow and bloodshot.’
This is wonderful writing about a profound subject – highly recommended.
Mrs Sweeney
