1. THE SUBMERGED AND THE SAVED
I must repeat: we, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. This is an uncomfortable notion of which I have become conscious little by little, reading the memoirs of others and reading mine at a distance of years. We survivors are not only an exiguous but also an anomalous minority: we are those who by their prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch bottom. Those who have, those who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return to tell about it, or have returned wordless; but they are the 'Muslims', the submerged, the complete witnesses, the ones whose deposition would have a general significance. They are the rule, we are the exception.
– Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati
2. GOOD INTENTIONS
Now, anyone who has sufficient experience of human affairs knows that the distinction (the opposition, a linguist would say) good faith/bad faith is optimistic and illuminist, and is all the more so, and for much greater reason, when applied to men such as those just mentioned. It presupposes a mental clarity which few have, and which even these few immediately lose when, for whatever reason, past or present reality arouses anxiety or discomfort in them.
– Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati
3. MEDUSA
Théodore Géricault – Le Radeau de la Méduse
In mid-afternoon on July 4th, 1816, the French frigate Medusa ran aground on the Arguin Bank, off the west coast of Africa. Without enough lifeboats to evacuate almost 400 travellers, a raft, 20 metres in length and 7 metres in width, was quickly built. On July 5th the evacuation of the frigate started, 146 men and one woman boarding the raft tugged by the lifeboats crammed with the remaining passengers. Even only half-loaded, the raft wasn't buoyant enough, with passengers standing waist-deep in the water. Perhaps because this made it difficult to tow the raft, after about 15 kilometres the ropes were cut, and the raft abandoned, supplied with only little water, little food, and a lot of wine.
Fights rapidly broke out between the officers and passengers on one hand, and the sailors and soldiers on the other. On the first night, 20 men were killed or committed suicide. Dozens died either in fighting to get to the centre of the raft, the only place safe in the stormy weather that ensued, or because they were washed overboard by the waves. Rations dwindled. By the fourth day there were only 67 left alive on the raft, and some resorted to cannibalism. On the eighth day, the fittest began throwing the weak and wounded overboard. When the raft was found by chance on July 19 only 15 of the passengers had remained alive. Five of the survivors died within the next few days.
On August 27, a ship reached the “wreck” of the Medusa. It hadn't sank, and wouldn't sink for another few months.
Méduse's surgeon Henri Savigny and geographer Alexander Corréard released their account (Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse) of the incident in 1817. It went through five editions by 1821 and was also published in an English translation.
4.
He who has seen the truth will forever remain inconsolable. Saved is only he who has never been in danger. A ship might even appear, now, on the horizon, and speed here on the waves to arrive a second before death and take us away, and have us return alive, alive — but this would not save us, really. Even if we ever found ourselves ashore somewhere again, we shall never again be saved.
– Alessandro Baricco, Oceano mare
5. SHAME.
That many (including me) experienced ‘shame,’ that is, a feeling of guilt during the imprisonment and afterward, is an ascertained fact confirmed by numerous testimonies. It is absurd, but it is a fact. […] On a rational plane, there should not have been much to be ashamed of, but shame persisted nevertheless, especially for the few bright examples of those who had the strength and possibility to resist. […] It is a thought that had only touched us then, but that returned later: you too perhaps could have, certainly should have.
Self-accusation is more realistic, or the accusation of having failed in terms of human solidarity. Few survivors feel guilty of having deliberately damaged, robbed, or beaten a companion. Those who did so (the kapos, but not only them) block out the memory. By contrast, however, almost everybody feels guilty of having omitted to offer to help.
Are you ashamed because you are alive in place of another? And in particular, of a man more generous, more sensitive, more useful, wiser, worthier of living than you? It is a proposition you cannot exclude: you examine your memories… no, you do not find obvious transgressions, you haven't supplanted anyone, you haven't hit (but would you have had the strength?), you didn't accept duties (but you weren't offered…), you haven't stolen anyone's bread; still, you cannot exclude it. It is no more than a supposition, indeed the shadow of a suspicion: that each man is his brother's Cain, that each one of us (but this time I say 'us' in a much vaster, indeed, universal sense) has usurped his neighbor's place and lived in his stead. It's a supposition, but it gnaws; it's deeply hidden like a moth; you can't see it from outside but it gnaws and bites.
I might be alive in the place of another, at the expense of another; I might have usurped, that is, in fact, killed. The “saved” of the Lager were not the best, those predestined to do good, the bearers of a message: what I had seen and lived through proved the exact contrary. Preferably the worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the “gray zone,” the spies. It was not a clear-cut rule (there weren't and aren't any clear-cut rules in human matters), but it was a rule nonetheless. I felt innocent, yes, but enrolled among the saved and therefore in permanent search of a justification in my own eyes and those of others. The worst survived, that is, the fittest; the best all died.
– Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati
