RISASODI
363
lies in a gelid lake, his eyes frozen over with ice so thick he can't even
weep for his sins. This soul begs Dante, "I'll tell you my story if only
you'll remove the ice from my eyes." Dante has him tell his story and
then reneges on his promise , commenting:
I oped them not.
Rudeness was courtesy to such as he.
6
In other words, it was Dante's duty to be cruel to him . I think some–
thing similar happened in Germany. The feeling that Dante, a fer–
vent Catholic, felt toward the damned, who have no further claim to
their rights and who must be forced to suffer, was perhaps the Nazis'
position with regard to the Jews: they felt they must be forced to en–
dure the maximum possible suffering.
7
RS:
Towards the end of the book, you recount an episode you also
included in
Survival in Auschwitz,
the story of Elias the dwarf. After
being goaded by Elias (the only man, you say, who actually enjoyed
life in the camp), you got into a fistfight - the only attempt in your
life to "render a blow for a blow." No match for your tenacious and
muscular adversary, Elias pinned you down by the throat, only to let
you go when he saw the first signs of approaching unconsciousness.
In
I sommersi e
i
salvati,
you use this story to introduce your thoughts
on justice and who should render justice, and your conclusion is that
justice should be left to the "professionals."
PL:
Only because I don't feel I'm capable. Then again, in our civ–
ilization, revenge is not allowed, and rightly so .
RS:
And yet the desire for revenge is very common .
PL:
Yes, the desire for revenge is very common, but to exact revenge
is illegal. Now, because of an intrinsic weakness of mine or because
of a gap in my upbringing, I'm not capable of acting like Jean
Amery .8 Amery says that, undercover ofa bombing raid, he punched
6. E io non IiI' apersi/e cortesia fu lui esser villano.
(Inferno
XXXIII , v. 149-150),
translation by Thomas William Parsons.
7. In
I sommersi e i salvati,
Levi calls this attitude "Schadenfreude," "the joy one feels
when harm is done a fellow man, nothing less than the joy of deliberately making
one's fellow man suITer" (Einaudi : Turin, 1986; p. 85).
8. J ean Amery, ne H ans Meyer, was a German philologist and philosopher, and a
thoroughly assimilated J ew. He was tortured by the Gestapo for belonging to the
Belgian resistance and then deported to Auschwitz as a Jew, where for a time,
Amery and Levi were confined to the same barracks. In 1978, Amery committed
suicide. "The Intellectual at Auschwitz," a chapter of
I sommersi e i salvati,
considers
Amery's story in more detail.
