Primo Levi’s appeal to all of us – as you’ll see in the poem below – could not be more timely. It is upon us to make sure that history does not to repeat itself.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-art-of-witness
The montage refers to Levi’s book The Periodic Table, photograph taken at KZ Ravensbrück. There is a new exhibit in Berlin right now about the inmates in this women’s camp who were doctors and nurses and forced to work in the infirmaries without means to treat the sick and dying. https://www.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Ausstellungsflyer_Med_Vers_Rav.pdf
Shema
You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.
Primo Levi
(Translated by Ruth Feldman & Brian Swann)