That beating and dastardly hatred
Lia Levi
They were four Russian soldiers on horseback. They walked burdened, in addition to pity, by a confused restraint. In them “the shame that the righteous person feels at the guilt committed by others… And it grieves him that it has been introduced into the world of things that exist.”
You recognize them, don’t you? These are the words with which Primo Levi tells us about his liberation in the Auschwitz camp. Extraordinary literary depiction? Not only that. For me an electrocution, an imprint that took root deep inside
Now what? What happens to me now? Are those four soldiers the ones who showed up again? And I feel stunned, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible, dastardly hatred that has come down on my head.
I find myself astonished to follow on public TV a “commentator” who, after wishing death for the Jews, feels the need to also make known her a desire to spit on their corpses, a cook who extends “to their children” the death threat dedicated to journalists ‘defenders of the Zionists’ while, in my neighborhood, a human being in a black hoodie is busy setting fire to the stumbling stones placed in front of the doorways from which Jewish families were taken destined for the Nazi ovens.
Doesn’t his decision to “kill the already killed” make you think that hatred has overflowed?
More recent is the list of Jewish (and related) names compiled by a self-styled New Communist Party. This obscure initiative does not deserve historical comparisons, but on an emotional level can I say that as a child I was also on an official list? It was set up by the Fascist Regime, and everyone knows what that list was later used for.
What about France? In Descartes’ France (“I think therefore I exist,” remember that?) Jewish citizens, now in mortal danger, there they are, fleeing to a country at war where, however, the “monster” is outside. On the landing of your house you can only find a neighbor who, on the right day, wishes you Shabbat Shalom. And Shabbat Shalom you will be able to respond even if you are a proud, happy layman.
But there is something broader. The cleared hatred has invaded the air and managed to infiltrate almost every nook and cranny of society. Thirteen-year-olds with knife use to the extreme, unprovoked deadly clashes between gangs of youths, women barbarically murdered by their mates, assaults by angry relatives on doctors and teachers, immediate revenge over laughable traffic accidents–everything is cue to destroy “things that exist.”
And it is from the astonishment in the face of this satanic whirlwind that I felt myself retreating in time and the restraint, the collective guilt for the very fact of being part of human beings, reappeared. An emotional clash, this, that strangely managed at times to drown out the anguish over the Jewish tragedy of Oct. 7. It remains idle the soul that has received a death blow, the poet tells us, but perhaps not. Grief recoiled deep within at the root of the new apocalyptic scenarios.
Ever since we were children, we happened to think with childish dread that the End of the World would be configured by the planet erupting as a huge volcano or by an entire star system collapsing to earth. Could it not instead be this dusty whirlwind that gradually covers objects and people that destroys everything? If the spring that sets society in motion were “Destrudo” nothing else would be needed for the scary end of the world.
Primitive man understood this one day: if you kill whatever living thing happens to be under your eyes, the other will kill you. And so he had learned how to deal.
Are we at the point of re-learning from primitive man? If so, that’s fine too.