The Drowned and the Saved

In this chapter, Levi reflects on the publication and distribution of his 1947 book titled If This Is a Man. Ten years after its initial run, the book “came back to life” (189), and it was eventually translated from Italian into at least eight languages and adapted for radio and the stage. When the book reached a German readership in 1959, Levi realized that though he had written the book “for Italians, for my children” (190), “those against whom the book was aimed like a gun were they, the Germans” (190-191) were also reading.

Levi explains that he does not desire revenge, but he believes that “[a]lmost all, though not all [Germans] had been cowardly” (191). He did not trust his German publisher to produce the book faithfully until he received a letter from his translator. The translator wrote to Levi of their similarities: they were the same age and the translator had studied in Italy. He was “anomalous” (193), having felt disgust towards Nazism and faked an illness in order to avoid the army. The translator went to northern Italy to study literature, and there he joined the Italian forces against the Fascists. The translator “had an affinity” (194) with Levi’s book, desiring the project of translation “as a way to continue his daring and silent struggle against his misled country” (194). Once Levi’s personal suspicions were alleviated, only his “linguistic suspicions” (195) remained, so he and his translator learned to work together and to compromise. A strong and faithful work of translation was the result, and Levi includes a letter of thanks in this chapter that he sent to his translator after the book was published in German. This letter became the preface to the German edition of If This Is a Man.

Levi goes on to discuss letters from German readers of his book that he received between 1961 and 1964. He pays particular attention to a letter he received from a couple who represent, to Levi, the upper middle-class German who was “not [a] fanatical but [an] opportunistic Nazi who repented when it was opportune to repent” (203). He responded to this letter with rage, explaining to the reader that “[t]hose who voted for [Hitler] certainly voted for his ideas” (204) and therefore, any act of dodging responsibility as this letter-writer attempted to do is reprehensible.

Levi credits other letter-writers as individuals who have “read the book attentively, often more than once” (206) and appreciated the book for how it has taught them about what happened. He includes excerpts from their letters to demonstrate the importance of their words. Levi explains in detail an epistolary friendship he developed with one letter-writer who “was the only one ‘with clean credentials’ and therefore not entangled in guilt feelings” (228). This friendship was “long and fruitful, often cheerful” (228), and Levi values the curiosity that they both possess and that bound them together in their correspondence.

Levi concludes the book with some final thoughts on various points he makes earlier in the book as well as changes in the world that have taken place since his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Germany has become “‘respectable,’” (230) and a new generation is on the verge of adulthood, “bereft not of ideals but of certainties, indeed distrustful of the grand revealed truth” (230). Levi points out the challenges of speaking with young people and the “risk of appearing anachronistic” (230) when speaking about an event that “happened to an entire civilized people” (230). Levi warns readers that such an event “can happen everywhere” (231), as it “only awaits its new buffoon” (231). No country in the world is protected from “a future tide of violence generated by intolerance, lust for power, economic difficulties, religious or political fanaticism, and racialist attritions” (231).

Levi acknowledges the negative outlook that states “there is a need for conflict” (231) and that small wars exist in society everywhere, as a way to save us from a conflict that encompasses all people. Levi rejects these arguments, asserting instead that “[t]here do not exist problems that cannot be solved around a table, provided there is good will and reciprocal trust” (232). As well, Levi explains that violence comes from violence; after all, “[m]any new tyrants have kept in their drawer Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf” (233).

The final paragraph of the book addresses one last stereotype, the one that applies to “our ex-guardians, the SS” (234). He believes that to stereotype them as torturers is not correct: “they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly” (234). More responsible than they are the “great majority of Germans, who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride, the ‘beautiful words’ of Corporal Hitler” (235).