Having read a lot about Primo Levi in this last week both his books and about his life this week – even if it was for an exam -, this has got me thinking a lot not only about his own aims in his literature but also how far we have come since 1945.
Primo Levi was a Jewish Italian chemist and Holocaust survivor who wrote a number of books about his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust, his literature on his experience of Auschwitz characteristic by its detached prose in a bid to give his readers a historical and factual account of his experiences and not one overridden by emotion and anger. His most important books were Se questo un uomo (If this is a man), La tregua (The Truce) and I sommersi e i salvati (The drowned and the saved).
Levi’s underlying fear that society would forget what happened at Auschwitz and the danger for a similar crime of this proportion to repeat itself was what motivated him as a writer. There has been a lot of speculation surrounding his death – many consider his death in 1987 an act of suicide – as it has been suggested that his ‘Auschwitz demons’ finally got the better of him. However even if the reason behind his death is another issue all together, and one which I am in no position to talk about, Levi has succeeded in getting me thinking about how we as human individuals regard ourselves as a collective unit through these events.
While I understand that anything surrounding the Holocaust or the Second World War maybe a banal topic to discuss at the moment, it is the way we are still dealing with it after more than 60 years that is still fascinating.
Not only is it evident from Levi, but also from the fact that a Holocaust denial law exists implicitly or explicitly in 13 countries, it is clear that as society at large, we simply do not trust ourselves not to repeat the grave errors that have characterised our past. The simple need for such a law, or even the fact that sensitivities still run extremely high whenever the issue is even mentioned, shows clearly our complete mistrust that we are able to guarantee, though this experience of our history, that the atrocities carried out in concentration camps are never repeated.
Saying this, obviously in absolutely no way am I suggesting that I do not understand the fury of many people whose relatives lost their lives or incurred incredible suffering during the Holocaust when people are denying its existence.
However even the fact that right now I feel the need to explain myself in order to state something that should be blatant and implied through the use of common sense, this alone strengthens my point.
I find myself agreeing with Austrian university professor Lothar Hobelt who was quoted saying when British historian David Irving was sentenced to a prison term in February 2006:
"This is a silly law by silly people for silly people. In fact, having a law that says you mustn't question a particular historical instance, if anything, creates doubt about it, because if an argument has to be protected by the force of law, it means it's a weak argument."
While we will never reach a stage where we can say that the events of recent history are able to guide us in the right direction and allow us to safely say that history will never repeat itself, it is disappointing however to see how little confidence there is in society that we are able to learn from our past and be reasonable in the way we view our future without the use of laws or other protective methods.
- NS-
Friday, 9 May 2008
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Frogs and storks
Following an idea from some crazy cypriot called Nassos, this blogg has risen from the depths of the unknown in order to conquer your world and take over your desktop! Straight from the streets of London, we bring you the beautiful, the ugly and the random! Don't stop to blink, read on.
In these hard times of stressful examinations and successful procrastination, you may think that writing posts destined to an obscure,yet attractive, blogg is self-destructive idiocy or, if you are one of those, escapatory genius; but the truth of the matter is that it is destiny. Yes it is destiny, and destiny it is that has brought you here to partake in the ritual mingling of the minds in the world-wide web of creativity that is "only" a couple clicks away.
Do you feel that your opinions and ideas serve no purpose other than to wear off the letters painted on your keyboard buttons? Are your 'delete' and 'backspace' buttons the only ones you hit without miss, every time around? Has life served you its share of hardship, leaving you eager to get your own and bite back? Do you have a sudden urge to leap onto the desk and challenge the muhammad ali poster hanging on your wall to a fight to the death?
If so, then you are standing in the right place. Simply take a step back, make a left turn, and run straight out the door, down the stairs, up past the picket fence and accross the river down near the old paper mill until you hit Main Street. Once you make it to Green Street, follow the white rabbit to the post office and send in your article to afromonkey.productions@gmail.com
If not, then simply mail your article, poem, picture, song, video, cake(?), essay or love letters to the address in the blogg's profile and it will do just as well.
This is your last moment of delusional freedom; from here on out, I work for you as you worked so long for him, but it's the they that we must worry about now. And so I propose a toast... to her, and to us! The blogg is now up, let's give this a try!
As Martin Luther said so well: "The world is too wicked to deserve princes much wiser and more just than this. Frogs must have storks."
-APG-
In these hard times of stressful examinations and successful procrastination, you may think that writing posts destined to an obscure,yet attractive, blogg is self-destructive idiocy or, if you are one of those, escapatory genius; but the truth of the matter is that it is destiny. Yes it is destiny, and destiny it is that has brought you here to partake in the ritual mingling of the minds in the world-wide web of creativity that is "only" a couple clicks away.
Do you feel that your opinions and ideas serve no purpose other than to wear off the letters painted on your keyboard buttons? Are your 'delete' and 'backspace' buttons the only ones you hit without miss, every time around? Has life served you its share of hardship, leaving you eager to get your own and bite back? Do you have a sudden urge to leap onto the desk and challenge the muhammad ali poster hanging on your wall to a fight to the death?
If so, then you are standing in the right place. Simply take a step back, make a left turn, and run straight out the door, down the stairs, up past the picket fence and accross the river down near the old paper mill until you hit Main Street. Once you make it to Green Street, follow the white rabbit to the post office and send in your article to afromonkey.productions@gmail.com
If not, then simply mail your article, poem, picture, song, video, cake(?), essay or love letters to the address in the blogg's profile and it will do just as well.
This is your last moment of delusional freedom; from here on out, I work for you as you worked so long for him, but it's the they that we must worry about now. And so I propose a toast... to her, and to us! The blogg is now up, let's give this a try!
As Martin Luther said so well: "The world is too wicked to deserve princes much wiser and more just than this. Frogs must have storks."
-APG-
2 comments:
"This is a silly law by silly people for silly people. In fact, having a law that says you mustn't question a particular historical instance, if anything, creates doubt about it, because if an argument has to be protected by the force of law, it means it's a weak argument."
I do not agree at all with this quote! This is NOT a silly law by silly people! However, it might be for silly people...
Denying the Holocaust is probably one of the stupidest things one can do talking about history! There is no doubt that it took place. Anybody who denies it should go and visit a concentration camp. It doesn't have to be Ausschwitz, it can be a smaller one.
At the age of 17 my school class went to the camp of Natzweiler-Struthof. It is just a small camp but still the experience was horrifying! There are images of these day that I will never forget in my live... Standing in a room where you can see that the floor is slightly angular towards a drain in the center, so the blood of the people shot is washed away easier....the oven in which they burnt the bodies...
However, there are still people denying that it happened. This is dangerous because some people might believe them (something one comes often across if he is confronted with Neo-Nazism) and this is the way how it could become possible for history to repeat itself. If people start to forget, may it be because they don't care or because they don't believe it ever happened. This is exactly why it is right that there is a law forbidding the denial of the Holocaust!
Just because the fact that the Holocaust did happen is protected by law in some countries, doesn't make the fact/argument weak. It just prevents people from denying proven facts in order to use it for their stupid ideology!
Yes, I totally agree that denying the Holocaust is one of the stupidest things oen can do, and my point is that given that it is so stupid and so obvious to everyone, why is there a need for a law to guarantee it? The point of the article was exactly to show that the mere existence of such a law in so many countries is evidence that we do not have faith in ourselves and in humanity in general, something that is quite sad and worrying for me to be honest.
I do understand that some stupid people may wish to deny it for whatever ridiculous reasons, but my argument was that even after such a horrible experience such as the Holocaust, we have not moved on enough - and probably never will unfortunately - in order to say that we have learned a lesson as a group and to trust ourselves for this not to be repeated without the need for such a law.
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