Primo Levi's 'The Reawakening':
Where Past Haunts the Present

Primo Levi, in "a liberated pri-
soner's long march home through
East Europe," relates one of the
most deeply moving stories in
"The Reawakening," published by
Little, Brown & Co., 34 Beacon,
Boston, as an Atlantic Monthly
Press Book.
It is the story of an Italian Jew
who, with other liberated men,
traveled through devastated areas,
risking their lives, experiencing
tensions and terrors that were the
war's aftermath.
They were returning to sanity
from the horrors of the concentra-
tion camps.

As 800 Italians loaded on
trucks at Katowics, in Poland,
for their homeward trek, there
was the additional irony of the
Russians not knowing where to
direct them, how to guide them.

And so their journey, the search
for food, the need for social con-
tacts, the insecurity that accom-
panied them, the delusions — all
combine to add another tragedy
tale to the holocaust literature.
But Levi is factual, retains a
sense of the human and the hu-
morous, relates his narrative with
an historical sense.
He tells about "two tall, thin
brothers, Viennese Jews about 50
years old, silent and cautious like
all the old Haeftlinge; an officer
of the regular Yugoslav Army,
who seemed as if he had not yet
succeeded in throwing off the
compliance and inertia of the
Lager, and who looked at us with
empty eyes. There was a sort of
human wreck, of indefinable age,
who spoke ceaselessly to himself
in Yiddish; one of the many whom
the ferocious life of the camp had
half destroyed, and then left to
their fate,• sealed up (and perhaps
protected) by a thick armor of in-
sensitivity or open madness."
Then he tells about the Greek
Jew, Mordo Nahum, the "lone
wolf, in an eternal war against
all . . -" Nahum alone repre-
sents a great__ drama in a very dra-
matic story .

when bread was precious, but
when there were the compas-
sionate as well as the cruel.
And the world's leaders be-
came the heroes of the rescued
in their march to freedom.

On that road to freedom, on 60
or 61 trucks, an entire contingent
was taken on and the -brilliant
writer Primo Levi, whose "Re-
awakening" was ably translated
from the Italian by Stuart Woolf,
relates the following:

"A new truck was traveling
with us towards Italy at the end
of our t r a i n, crammed with
young Jews, boys and girls,
coming from all th.e countries
of Eastern E u r op e. None of
them seemed more than 20 years
old, but they were extremely
self-confident and resolute
people; they were young Zion-
ists, on their way to Israel,

traveling where they were able

to, and finding a path where
they could. A ship was waiting
for them at Bari; they had pur-
chased their truck, and it had

Philadelphia Leader
Chief of Appeals Court

PHILADELPHIA (JTA)—Judge
Harry E. Kalodner, a prominent
leader in the Jewish community,
became chief judge of the U. S.
Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit, with headquarters in this
city, in ceremonies here. He suc-
ceeded Chief Judge John Biggs
Jr., who retired.
Judge Kalodner, at one time a
newspaperman in this city, was a
judge of this city's Court of Com-
mon Pleas No. 2 from 1836 to
1938; was appointed by President
Roosevelt in 1938 as a judge of the
U. S. District Court here; and was
elevated to the Court of Appeals
in 1946.
He is vice president of the Jew-
ish Exponent, a member of the
board of directors of the Federa-
tion of Jewish Agencies and the
Philadelphia Psychiatric Institute,
a trustee of Yeshiva University
and a member of the national coun-
cil of the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee.
• * * *

And in Toronto .. .

TORONTO (JTA) — Prof. Bora

proved the simplest thing in the Laskin, prominent in Jewish affairs

world to attach it to our train:
they had not asked anybody's
permission, but had hooked it
on, and • that was that. I was
amazed, but they laughed at my
amazement: 'Hitler's dead, isn't
he?' replied their leader, with
his intense hawk-like glance.
They felt immensely free and
strong, lords of the world and
their destinies."

Levi and his fellow-liberated
finally reached home, in Turin,
where this story was written in
1962. The end of the 35-day jour-
ney is described, thus:
"It is a dream within a dream,
varied in detail, one in substance-
I am sitting at a table with my
family or with friends, or at work,
or in the green countryside; in
short, in a peaceful relaxed en-
vironment, apparently without ten-
sion or affliction; yet I feel a deep
and subtle anguish, the definite
sensation of an impending threat.
And in fact, as the dream pro-
It is the drama of an era, ceeds, slowly or brutally, each
time in a different way. every-
thing collapses and disintegrates
around me, the scenery, the walls,
the people, while the anguish be-
comes more intense and more pre-
cise. Now everything has changed
to chaos; I am alone in the center
of a grey turbid nothing, and now,
I know what this thing means.
and I also know that I have always
known it; I am in the Lager once
more, and -nothing is true outside
the Lager. All the rest was a brief
pause, a deception of the senses,
a dream; my family, nature in
flower, my home. Now this inner
dream, which continues, gelid, a
well-known voice resounds: a
single word, not imperious, but
brief and subdued. It is the dawn
command of Auschwitz, a foreign
word, feared and expected: get up,

in Canada for many years, has
been appointed a justice on the
Ontario Court of Appeal. Among
Justice Laskin's activities have
been participation in the work of
Canadian Jewish Congress, where
he had served as a member of the
national council and the national
executive board.

Novel 'Trial and Triumph'
Evaluates Maimonides' Life

In "Trial and Triumph," pub-
lished by Crown (419 Park Ave.
S., NY 16) Dr. Lester M. Morrison,
a physician who has practiced for
30 years in Canada, England and
this country and who has written
130 books and tracts, and Rich-
ard G. Hubler, novelist and col-
umnist and former Newsweek ed-
itor, combined their skills to pro-
duce a novel based on the life
of Maimonides.
The first portion is a narrative
giving Maimonides' background,
his family relationships, his numer-
ous trials and tribulations, by his
father. The second is narrated by
a pupil.
The entire era passes in review
for the readers in this unusual
novel, and Maimonides' treatment
of his sister, his influence on the
rest of the family, his work with
cabbalists, crusaders, Christians
and Jews, is a recapitulation of
historic events.

about the hero. These eight pages
explan the preceding 461 and in
their way evaluate the history of
that time. Briefly, in this chapter,
minute in comparison with the
entire lengthy story, the two au-
thors evaluate Jewish-Christian-
Moslem relations, the challenges
that confronted the most illustrious
man of the 12th Century, the con-
ditions that caused Jews to be
insecure and to wander, as Mai-
monides (Moses ben Maimon) did.
The narrative adds merit to the
final chapter in its elaboration on
the many events of that time, of
the people involved, the emotions
and the human relations, thus mak-
ing "Trial and Triumph" an inter-
est creating novel.

I speak truth, not so much as I
would, but as much as I dare; and
I dare a little thus more as I grow
older.—Montaigne.

It is Maimonides the great
physician, the teacher, the
philosopher, the religious com-
mentator, who is presented.

The great people of his time
play a role in this story. It is an
unusual tale—replete with historic
facts.
Most important is the conclud-
ing section, an eight-page author's
note that offers the basic facts

1
•ILT•co•
17.9 I

IF YOU TURN THE

UPSIDE DOWN YOU WON'T
FIND A -FINER WINE THAN

Milan Wineries, Detroit, Mich,.

•

•

‘

40 •

3US1

Wstawach.' "

Your
nickel
treat to
UNICEF
at
Halloween
fills his
cup
with milk

for
25 days

Like the conclusion, the entire
narrative is powerful, overwhelm-
ing, challenging. "The Reawaken-
ing— is one of the very strong
stories about the homeward trek
away from the Lager, from the
concentration camp, toward free-
dom, with the past haunting the
present.

NUFACTURED

CO,PITTSBURGq,PA

Award to HST Will Draw
Diplomatic Corps Aides

NEW YORK
Prominent mem-
bers of the diplomatic corps to-
gether with leaders in all walks
of American communal and civic
life will join in the tribute to
President Harry S. Truman when
he receives the annual Theodor
Herzl Award-Gold Medallion of
the Zionist Organization of Amer-
ica, Nov. 28, at the Hotel Waldorf
Astoria.
President Truman will be rec-
ognized for his historic achieve-
ments for the establishment of the
state of Israel and his role in
safeguarding its independence.
Some 1,500 persons will attend
the $100-a-plate dinner.

—

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, October 15, 1965-13

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one is saying,"More beans, please' HEINZ strictly VEGETARIAN BEANS.

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