360
PARTISAN REVIEW
PL:
No, for common prisoners like me, sex wasn't a problem. It was
completely forgotten , even in our dreams .
RS:
What do you think of theories that define the Jews as a racial
entity?
PL:
The question of race is just plain foolishness , pure unreality.
Geneticists are seriously exploring the matter now. As a matter of
fact, there was a conference on genetic blood-typing just yesterday in
Turin . Apparently, there's a method of analyzing blood that gives a
window onto the genetic subdivision of the human species, and the
results show that the Jews don't belong to anyone subdivision. They
are a religious and/or cultural unity. But racial? Certainly not. A
YemeniteJew has nothing in common "racially" with a RussianJew,
at least half of whom are Ukranian converts.
RS:
Anthropologists say that, genetically, Yemenite Jews resemble
Yemenites more than they do Jews from other countries.
PL:
But of course. How complicated is the history oftheJews! How
many Jews have converted to Catholicism? And how many non–
Jews have converted to Judaism? Aside from the Khasars, there's the
story of the French duchy whose duke converted to Judaism around
the year 1000, I believe, and brought all his subjects with him. And
those weren't the only two cases in history. All during the Middle
Ages in many parts of the Mediterranean basin, Jews had a certain
prestige and made converts.
RS:
In any case, do you consider yourself a member of the Jewish
race or the Jewish culture?
PL:
I have never bothered myself with questions of racial belonging.
RS:
On what then, do you base this fact of "feeling Jewish?"
PL:
It's a cultural fact. I can't say that Judaism has been my Pole
star. I'm also a chemist and also a writer: there are a lot of things
that interest me and Judaism is just one of them. I've been led a bit
too, "channeled" I'd say, by my own books .
Survival in Auschwitz
was
read as a book written by aJewish author-especially abroad, much
more than in Italy - and by dint of being called a Jewish writer, I
became one! I've already mentioned that I began to wonder if any
goyim lived in America. I didn't come across a single one of them!
It almost becomes comical. My editor is Jewish, and all his col–
laborators are Jewish . He introduced me exclusively to illustrious
American Jews . I spoke to Jewish audiences. And not just in New
York, but everywhere I went. My wife and I began to wonder,
where are the others?
RS:
Perhaps you were invited to speak to Jewish groups because
