LEST WE FORGET:
Timeless Lessons of Auschwitz
thanks to Primo Levi
with Galen Bartholomew - 28 May 2026
On the evening of Thursday 28 May, Galen Bartholomew presented members of the Vale of Evesham Historical Society with a fascinating but harrowing talk on the Nazi concentration camp complex at Auschwitz. He based his talk on the account by Primo Levi of the 11 months he had spent in the camp between February 1944 and January 1945.
Levi was born in Turin in 1919 and raised in that city, where he took a degree in chemistry. Captured by the Nazis in December 1943 whilst with the partisans in the Aosta Valley, he spent nearly a year in Auschwitz until the camp was liberated by the Red Army. His account of those 11 months is factual (facts which are almost beyond belief) and non-judgmental.
He survived to relate his experiences because of a series of lucky chances:
On his arrival at the camp he was selected to be a worker and not sent straight to the gas chamber.
He spoke some German and could therefore understand the orders of the guards.
Lorenzo Perrone – a forced labourer who was not Jewish and therefore had better living conditions - shared his food with Primo (Lorenzo even managed on occasion to smuggle a letter from Primo to his mother out of the camp; eventually Primo was to name his children after Lorenzo.)
His degree in chemistry made him of some value to the Germans, and he was put to work in the laboratories of an on-site factory attempting to make synthetic rubber. He therefore had an indoors job during the harsh winter.
He contracted scarlet fever early in 1945 and was left behind when most of the inmates were forced onto a long and fatal march from the camp (in Poland) into Germany. Guards were ordered to murder those left behind, but failed to do so because of the rapid advance of Russian forces.
With the aid of contemporary photographs and with some of his own pictures, taken when he visited the Auschwitz site, Galen told his audience about the horrors perpetrated in the camp. The statistics are almost beyond belief. Over 1 million people were murdered - most of them Jewish, along with tens of thousands of other people deemed undesirable (Roma, the disabled, Soviet prisoners of war). (The camp was originally intended to hold Polish political prisoners after the Nazi invasion, but soon diversified.)
Not surprisingly Levi suffered from depression after his return to Turin after the war. He died in 1987 after a fall from a third floor landing in his apartment block. His death was ruled a suicide, though many of his friends disputed this.
This was a disturbing and thought-provoking talk. Galen recommended a number of books and after a respectful silence at the end of the presentation, there was a good deal of discussion.
