if not now, when
Posted by popkitchen | Filed under books
Holocaust Memorial Day was marked today. By coincidence, currently I am reading a novel by Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi If Not Now, When (Se non ora, quando), which follows a group of Russian Jews making their way through Ukraine and Poland to Italy, starting in 1943. Levi’s opus was shaped by his own experience from the concentration camp, which followed his brief period of fighting with Italian partisans.
For a title, Levi is using a Jewish saying, originating from Hilel the Elder, one of the most imporant religious leaders of the Jews. In the book, this saying is transformed into a poem, recited by one of the characters, during a break from marching through desolate areas. It captures the Jewish experience, as well as the stories of the characters in the book
Do you recognize us? We are the flock of the ghetto,
Fleeced for a thousand years, resigned to the offence.
We are the tailors, the scribes, and the cantors
Withered in the shadow of the Cross.
Now we have learned the paths of the forests,
We have learned to shoot, and we hit straight on.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If not thus, how? And if not now, when?
Our brothers have risen to heaven
Through the ovens of Sobibor and of Treblinka,
They have dug themselves a grave in the air.
Only we few have survived
For the honor of our submerged people,
For vengeance, and for witness.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If not thus, how? And if not now, when?
We are the sons of David and the stubborn ones of Massada.
Each of us bears in his pocket the stone
Which smashed the forehead of Goliath.
Brothers, away from the Europe of tombs:
Let us climb together toward the land
Where we will be men among other men.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
And if not thus, how? And if not now, when?
After reciting of the poem and a story on its author Martin the Carpenter, Gedaleh, leader of the partizan gang says „That’s enough now: these aren’t the thoughts for everyday. They’re alright every now and then, but if you live with them you just poison yourself, and you’re not a partisan anymore. And bear this in mind: I believe only in three things: vodka, women and submachine gun. Once I also believed in reason, but now anymore“.
Levi thought of this book as his adventure novel and throughout the first two hundred pages (which is where I am right now), you are following the advances of a unit, their conversations on war, life before the war, family and what pushes them ahead, as the place they are fleeing from never recognized them as their own.
I am off to continue reading. I leave you to the first part of the TV documentary on Levi’s visit to Auschwitz in the beginning of the eighties.
Tags: holocaust memorial day, primo levi, remembrance
