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DT: In the concentration camps one would adapt to anything?
PL: Well, the question is a curious one;
The ones who adapted to everything are those who survived.
But the majority did not adapt to everything, and died.
Died because one was unable to adapt even to things which seem trivial to us.
Shoes, for example.
They would throw a pair, no, actually two mismatched shoes, at you.
One with a high heel, one without.
One had to be almost an athlete to learn how to walk like that.
One was too tight, the other too big
and we had to make complicated exchanges
to find a way to match two shoes which could fit, if you were lucky.
In any case, they were shoes which would hurt
and those who had delicate skin would suffer from infections.
I had them too. I still have the scars.
But mine healed miraculously by themselves,
even though I never missed one day of work.
But those who were sensitive to infections
would die of shoes,
of infected wounds which never healed.
The feet would swell, rub up against the shoes
and one had to go to the hospital.
But at the hospital swollen feet were not considered a disease.
They were too common.
Those with swollen feet would be sent to the gas chambers.
Guide: Almost 7 tons of women hair.
This hair was found in paper sacks
and were meant to be delivered
but they could not manage to do it due to lack of time.
German companies bought this hair,
we have documents regarding a company (name incomprehensible, TN) in Bavaria
that was paying 50 pfennig for one kg hair.
Hair was used as raw materials.
German industries used it to make clothes, mattresses, wigs or,
for instance, over there, in front of us, on the left
there's a material made out of hair which was found after the war.
DT: How was it to come out of Auschwitz, the first contact with the Polish population?
PL: People were distrustful;
The Poles had substantially gone from one occupation to another.
From a savage one, which was that of the Germans, to another one,
less savage and perhaps more primitive, which was that of the Russians.
But they were suspicious towards everyone, including us.
We were foreigners. We didn't understand one another;
We were wearing this uniform of inmates,
which to them was frightful.
They didn't want to talk to us.
Only some, a few, took pity on us.
Those with whom we managed to communicate.
Understanding one another is very important.
Between the man who makes himself understood and that one who doesn't
there is an abysmal difference:
the first saves himself, the other not.
This was an experience of the lager too:
The fundamental importance which understanding and being understood has.
DT: For the Italians, the language problem...
PL: For the Italians, it has been the cause of their ratio of mortality,
higher than in other groups; Italians and Greeks.
The majority of Italians deported with me
died in the first few days for being unable to understand.
They didn't understand the orders,
but there was no tolerance for those who didn't understand.
Orders had to be understood.
An order was given once, yelled, and that was it.
Then there were beatings.
They didn't understand when it was announced that shoes could be exchanged;
They didn't understand when they would call us to shave us, once a week;
They were always the last ones, they would always arrive late.
In my opinion, among the many causes for drowning in the lager,
that of language is one of the primary.
DT: A little while ago we passed through a station that you quote in your book "La Tregua" ("The Truce")...
PL: Trzebinia.
Yes, it was kind of a station between Katowice and Krakow
where the train had stopped.
This train stopped all the time.
It took 3-4 days to cover a distance of about 150 Km.
The train had stopped, and I had gotten off
and had met for the first time a Polish civilian,
he was a lawyer, with whom I could communicate,
because he spoke German and also French.
I didn't know Polish and I don't now either
And so he asked me where I was coming from
and I told him "I come from Auschwitz".
I still had that striped uniform on.
He asked me why, and I answered "I am an Italian Jew".
He was translating my answers to some passers-by who had crowded around,
they were Polish peasants and workers, it was early morning...
As I told, I don't speak Polish but
I knew just enough of it
to understand that he had altered my answer
from "Italian Jew" to "Italian political prisoner".
Then I protested in French:
"I am a political prisoner too, but I am a Jew."
"I was brought to Auschwitz as a Jew not as a political prisoner".
And he quickly replied to me in French:
"It's better for you; Poland is a sad country".
DT: We are about to return to our hotel in Krakow.
In your opinion, what did the holocaust represent for the Jewish people?
PL: Not something new. There had been others.
Incidentally, I never liked this term 'holocaust'.
It seems to me to be inappropriate, rhetorical and wrong, most of all.
It represented a turning point:
It was such as a measure, as a way, above all.
Because it was perhaps the first time in recent times in which
anti-Semitism had been planned by the state,
not only condoned or allowed as in the Russia of the Czars,
rather deliberate.
And there was no escape: all of Europe had become a huge trap.
This was something new,
and it entailed a turning point, not only for European Jews,
but also for American Jews, for the Jews of the entire world.
DT: In your opinion, another Auschwitz, another massacre like the one
which took place 40 years ago, could it happen again?
PL: Not in Europe, in my opinion, for reasons of immunity.
Some kind of immunization must exist.
It is difficult that in a few decades, 50, 100 years, another Nazism like that one may be reborn in Germany,
and another Fascism like that one in Italy.
Therefore, I think that this won't happen again in Europe.
But the world is much bigger than Europe.
I also think that there are countries in which there would be the desire
to set up an Auschwitz and only the means lack.
DT: The idea is not dead...
PL: The idea is not dead. Nothing ever dies. Everything arises renewed.
DT: Forms change...
PL: Forms change. Forms are important too.
DT: Is it possible, in your opinion, to abolish man's humanity?
PL: Yes, unfortunately.
And that is really the characteristic of the Nazi lager.
About the others, I don't know, because I don't know them. Perhaps in Russia the same thing happens.
It's to abolish man's personality, inside and outside,
not only of the prisoner, but also of the jailer. He too loses his humanity in the lager.
These are two different itineraries, but with the same result.
And I would say that only a few had the good fortune of remaining aware during their imprisonment.
Some regained their awareness of the experience later,
but during it, they had lost it.
Many forgot everything.
They did not record their experiences in their mind.
They didn't impress on their memory track.
Thus it happened to all, a profound modification in their personality.
Most of all, our sensibility lost sharpness,
so that the memories of our home had fallen into second place.
The memory of family had fallen into second place
in face of urgent needs, of hunger,
of the necessity to protect oneself against cold, beatings, fatigue...
All of this brought about a condition which we could call animal-like.
We were like work animals.
It is curious how this animal-like condition would repeat itself in language.
In German there are two words for eating:
One is 'essen' and it refers to people,
the other is 'fressen', referring to animals.
One says a horse 'frisst', for example, or a cat.
In the lager, without anyone having decided that it should be so,
the verb for eating was fressen, not essen.
As if the perception of the animalesque regression was clear to all.
DT: You are now almost at the end of your second return to Auschwitz.
What comes to your mind?
PL: Many things come to mind.
One is this: it bothers me a bit that the Poles...
the Polish government, appropriated Auschwitz,
made it into the place of the Polish nation's martyrdom.
In fact it has been so, in the first years, in 1941 and 1942.
But later with the making of Birkenau lager,
of the gas chambers and the ovens,
it has become most of all the destruction tool of the Jewish people.
DT: Don't you think that people today want to forget Auschwitz as soon as possible?
PL: Signs do exist that this is taking place:
forgetting or even denying.
This is meaningful.
Those who deny Auschwitz are the same ones who would be ready to make it again.