Not to notice.

• Author: Levi, Primo
• Position: Brief Article - Excerpt

In January 1941 the fate of Europe and the world seemed to be sealed. Only the deluded could still think that Germany would not win; the stolid English "had not noticed that they had lost the game", and obstinately resisted under the bombings; but they were alone and suffered bloody losses on all fronts. Only a voluntarily deaf and blind man could have any doubts about the fate reserved for the Jews in a German Europe: we had read Feuchtwanger's Opperrnanns, smuggled secretly in from France, and a British White Book, which arrived from Palestine and described the "Nazi atrocities"; we had only believed half of it, but that was enough. Many refugees from Poland and France had reached Italy, and we had talked with them: they did not know the details of the slaughters that were taking place behind a monstrous curtain of silence, but each of them was a messenger, like those who run to Job to tell him, "I alone have escaped to tell you the story."

And yet, if we wanted to live, if we wished in some way to take advantage of the youth coursing through our veins...