'RISASODI
357
recognize them immediately,
It
happened to me in Israel. I went
there knowing that a former prisonmate would meet me at my hotel.
Even with all the bustle of people coming and going in the lobby, I
picked him out right away. And it even happened to me recently in
England . I was there for the publication of
Survival in Auschwitz.
2
Shortly beforehand, I had received a letter from Bristol, from a
family that had read a brief story about a certain Goldbaum in
The Periodic Table.
They asked me if the person in the book could
have been a relative of theirs. I answered that I would be in England
soon if they wanted to see me , and so we met. They had a picture of
this Goldbaum with them - taken before he was captured, obvi–
ously, in 1940. But I recognized him immediately, In fact, it was a
shock seeing that photograph, it was really like a blow to the
stomach.
RS:
It's ironic that the most painful moment of your life has also
been the most incisive.
PL:
There's no contradiction there , don't you think? It was painful ,
certainly, but also - and it seems cynical to say so - it was also the
most interesting period of my life. It was an adventure too. I'm not
the only one who talks like this. As I mentioned , I have many friends
here in Italy, Jews and non-Jews, Jewish deportees and non-Jewish
deportees . A non-Jewish friend of mine was deported as a partisan
when she was only seventeen, She lived her imprisonment at
Ravensbruck much as I live mine at Auschwitz . Like me , she con–
ducts a perfectly normal life now, But she also has a selective
memory , and that's because she
grew
up
in Ravensbruck. At seven–
teen, when she first passed through the concentration camp gates,
she was just a young country school teacher. At Ravensbruck , she
learned French and German ; she learned how to live in a collectiv–
ity; she learned everything there , She says, "Ravensbruck was my
university."
RS:
You say something similar.
PL:
Yes , I grew up at Auschwitz. I don't know if it's a virtue, or for–
tune or something else , but I truly accumulated an enormous
amount of material , of notions, of considerations that I have yet to
fully sort out.
RS:
Were you a reflective person even before going to Auschwitz?
PL:
Yes , I was pretty reflective before - in my own way! I was a
2. Survival in Auschwitz
was translated in England under the title
If
This Is A Man ?
The original title is
Se questa e' un uomo?
