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January 30, 2009
Primo Levi's dramatic work
Holocaust Remembrance Day performance was moving.
ERIC O'DONNELL
Against a backdrop of steel-blue barbed wire, Alessandro Raveggi, accompanied by Daniela Rosaria Romano on the accordion, performed a dramatic reading of excerpts from Holocaust survivor Primo Levi's autobiographical novel If This is a Man in a stark and moving commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Monday.
The event was organized and presented by the Italian consulate in Vancouver and the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), along with the Rothstein theatre and the organization Associazione Shalom, which is based in Florence. The groups' collaboration began in 2005, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring Jan. 27 – the date in 1945 on which Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau – to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Italian consulate and the VHEC usually mark the day with primarily musical performances. Alberta Lai, director of the Italian Cultural Institute, an arm of the consulate here in Vancouver, explained that this year they decided to go in a slightly different direction, with a dramatic reading of Levi's most famous work. "We thought that a reading, combined with music, was the best way to bring people to know Primo Levi," said Lai. "This is an invitation to the Jewish community here in Vancouver to read all of his books and be introduced to the Italian literary world."
Levi, a Jewish-Italian chemist, was captured by Italian fascists in northern Italy, as part of an insurgent group. He was held prisoner for several weeks in Fossoli, an internment camp for Jews, in what he stresses were reasonable and moderate conditions. However, the camp was overrun by the Germans in February 1944 and he and 650 other prisoners were transported to Auschwitz. Only 20 of these people left that camp alive. In fact, almost all were killed immediately. Levi writes: "More than 500 in all – not one was living two days later."
Levi's book mainly concentrates on the effects of the extermination camp experience on the Jewish prisoners more than on the specifics of German brutality, although early in the reading, when the Germans have first taken control of Fossoli, he is dumbfounded by the casual brutality of the SS. "How can one man hit another man without anger?" Levi wonders.
But the slow dehumanization of the prisoners preoccupies Levi more than the details of German depravity, and he records it almost dispassionately: "Our language lacks words to describe the offence – the destruction of a man." And, "They've taken away our clothes, our shoes, our hair. They've even taken away our names."
Levi observes of the forced daily march that the inmates were "marching like automatons – their souls are dead." Slowly, as the bitter winter saps the morale and physical strength of the survivors, their very humanity withers. Levi records, "We learn that our personality is fragile – it's much more endangered than our lives." He witnesses that competition for survival among the inmates is intense, and consideration for others is often nonexistent. "Here, the struggle to survive is without respite. Everyone is desperately, fiercely alone," he writes. "Today, in this place, the only purpose is to reach the spring. There is no aim after this aim."
There is a painful honesty in these readings. Levi acknowledges the completeness of the German triumph when recounting an incident where prisoners blow up a crematorium at Birkenau. One of the conspirators is brought before the Nazis to be executed and a German SS commandant makes a long speech denouncing his crime. Levi records that there is no reaction from the assembled prisoners: "We remained standing – bent and grey – our heads dropped." He concludes, "To destroy a man is almost as difficult as to create one. It has not been quick, nor easy. But you Germans have been successful."
Raveggi's performance brought life to Levi's writing. He was dramatic without being overwrought. The pace of the reading was controlled and varied, and he sustained interest with subdued sound effects and movement, which was always at one with his material. Throughout, the plaintive and mournful strains of the accordion, played gracefully by Romano, heightened the deep sadness of the catastrophe that Levi describes as "... incomprehensible and mad. This is Hell."
This was the first and only performance of If This is a Man in North America. Raveggi and Romano have performed it in Italian before, but not in English. As Lai put it, "This was a gift to have them performing here."
And it was a gift that was clearly appreciated by a nearly full house at the Norman Rothstein Theatre. There wasn't any of the coughing, shifting in seats and rattling of programs that often accompanies dramatic monologues. When asked for her reaction, audience member Ovsanna Kadian said, "It definitely captured my imagination. I felt like I was there." Angela Piccini commented, "The interplay between the music and the words was beautiful and moving." Piccini also appreciated the lack of overt emotion in most of Levi's account: "In dramatizing an event like this, you undercut its significance."
The event was beautifully and simply presented, from the introduction of six Holocaust survivors by Frieda Miller, executive director of the VHEC, to the remarks by Uberto Vanni d'Archirafi, consul general of Italy in Vancouver, and the reading itself.
Eric O'Donnell is a retired secondary school teacher. Recently relocated to Vancouver from Toronto, he now focuses his time on photography and writing.
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