Against fascism: Primo Levi

Erich Hartmann, A display of shoes at Auschwitz concentration camp, 1994 [Magnum Photos]

Primo Levi

Excerpt from 'Preface to L. Poliakov's Auschwitz', in Primo Levi, The Black Hole of Auschwitz (Cambridge: Polity, 2005)

[E]very civilised man needs to know that Auschwitz existed, and what was done there. [...] Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. In this book the signs of the infection are described: rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.