"If This Is a Man" Primo Levi

What makes us human?

So many things, you would say. But what is something that makes us unique?

Well, you can think about it while I try to give you my answer.

If your instinct is to help people in need, you are human — with basic empathy and emotional intelligence. If you are able to ask for forgiveness — well, good job, human. If you are good at forgetting historical lessons — welcome to the modern era. And if you are capable of being unbelievably cruel to others — turns out you are called human too. And unfortunately, you are not a rare species.

There are certain themes and stories that make me deeply emotional. Sometimes I think it is because, in past lives, I was in a concentration camp or sent to Siberia — definitely a victim of some regime. I don't have much evidence for that, though. Apparently, my radical hatred of dictators and winter is not enough evidence.

Or maybe I just have some emotional intelligence and empathy. I think there might be slightly more evidence for that.

I cried while reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank when I was eleven. I wasn't able to finish Nino Haratischwili's The Eighth Life (for Brilka). And for the past three years, I've been trying to finish Zaira Arsenishvili's novel, but sometimes it just feels like too much for my mental state.

 I was also reading Primo Levi's If This Is a Man for ages. But before I start talking about this book, I want to say one important thing:

It is important to call things by their names, no matter who is committing the crime. Even if the person committing it used to be a victim themselves in the past, a crime is a crime.

Killing civilians for land, power, revenge, or simply to prove your point is and will always be an act of cowardice.

And yet, here we are, in the 21st century, switching roles and repeating the same shit.

This book is about an older version of that same shit. Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist, was forced to experience the cruelty of humans firsthand and then somehow find the strength to share it with us.

A book about what happens when you are stripped of almost everything that makes you human — and, perhaps, about how you survive when that happens.

He writes about how such an environment creates its own rules — rules so far removed from what we normally understand as human:

“To achieve your goals by appropriate means, and whoever deviates must pay the price.”

And then he shows how these rules and this attitude slowly make people lose themselves.

It is unbearable to watch how people behave when death is so close. How mothers remain mothers and prepare their children for the next day — as if there is going to be a next day for them. How quickly they have to prepare everything, even making sure they have enough time left for grief.

Now you understand why it was so hard for me to keep reading.

According to Levi, once you lose the hope of tomorrow, you are dead meat. So people try to fill themselves with everyday activities. Anything that gives the day some kind of structure, some purpose, some reason to keep going.

Time loses its meaning. Was it this evening or yesterday evening? You try not to think about it. You hold on to yesterday, today, and, most importantly, tomorrow.

And then you realize that there is no language that has the exact words for this kind of cruelty, or for this miserable state of being human. "Never" here means Morgen früh (tomorrow morning)

You also begin to understand how important ordinary, almost meaningless things can become. A watch. A handkerchief. A friend's photograph. Things that, under normal circumstances, we barely think about, suddenly become precious. And perhaps they also become proof that you are still human.

Oh, and I almost forgot about shoes.

Shoes can become one of the most important things in a concentration camp. As Levi puts it, “death starts from the shoes.” A pair of shoes can mean the difference between being able to keep moving and being completely broken down.

And maybe that is what makes the book so difficult: it doesn't only tell you about death. It shows you, step by step, how a person can be stripped of almost everything — dignity, identity-you don't have a name anymore (you even have a collective dreams, nothing individual for you), time, hope, even the meaning of ordinary objects — and still try to remain a human being.

But you still try to stay human.

At least in the beginning.

When you see that every evening there are fewer of you, it makes you sad. You notice the empty places. You notice the people who are no longer there. You are still human.

But then, if you want to survive, you have to learn to become indifferent to other people's “disappearance.” You begin to convince yourself that you are nothing more than a tired animal. And perhaps that makes it easier to survive.

Even grief has to be rationed.

You allow yourself only two hours to be unhappy — two hours to think about your family, your friends, the people you love. And then you have to stop. Because if you let yourself grieve without limits, you won't survive.

Even mourning the people you love becomes something you have to control.

And you start convincing yourself — or perhaps, more accurately, hoping — that the next person to be killed will not be you. Maybe it will be that old man who no longer has the strength to go on. Maybe the sick one. Maybe someone else.

Anyone but me.

In this “world” — or hell, really — gratitude is expressed to God for the worst possible reasons.

I didn't get killed. Someone else did.

You don't thank each other. You don't celebrate someone else's survival. Survival becomes an individual thing. If it is not me, then it is someone else.

But then something changes.

When human nature slowly begins to come back, when you understand that the end is near, gratitude becomes something you express towards other human beings. You share your food. You share your water. You help someone else.

And perhaps that is how you understand that the camp is finally over — not simply because the gates are open, but because you can slowly begin to return to being human.

You always need a reason to survive.

A good one is the desire to tell others.

Sometimes that is the only reason left.

And why do we want to tell the story?

So that it will never happen again.

So that people will remember.

So that we learn.

So that we don't repeat it.

But did the author succeed?

Look around.

Does it look like it?