I went down to the toilets and took a leak and washed my hands slowly. ‘You were right,’ I said to my reflection in the mirror, ‘What you’ve been thinking since Aïn Deb, Papa was just obeying orders, he was doing his duty.’ To the bitter end. ‘Meine Ehre heißt Treue’ – ‘My Honour is called Loyalty.’ I felt like throwing up.

Shemà

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, 10 JANUARY 1946

To this poem, Rachel had added the verse:

Your offspring do not know;

They live, they play, they love.

And when what was appears to them;

The tragedies bequeathed by their parents;

They are faced with strange questions,

Glacial silences,

Nameless shadows.

My house has crumbled, grief has made me powerless;

And I do not know why.

My father never told me.

Malrich’s Diary - Wednesday, 9 October 1996

Malrich’s Diary

Wednesday, 9 October 1996