The form, the format you would say, of the last bits of the memoir, of his account, is called Ten Days, and suddenly we're reading a diary. It's a diary entries. And the last day is January 27th. And tomorrow, January 27th is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, when the Russian army comes. And there will be a small commemoration in town at the [FOREIGN] Gallery on Elm Street at 7 o'clock. But commemoration of liberation, and Primo Levi is saved because he's in the infirmary and somehow the nazis forget about that because Nazi power is crumbling, and the guards run away, or the ones who were still there who were supposed to do whatever they do, right? A diary. So I have to ask you, I've told you that we have different genres, different kinds of writing and we have a personal account, like Elie Wiesel, which is really a tragic account. We have the Parnass' account, which goes in and out of a personal thing, but echoes a literary form invented by an Italian writer named Boccachio. You've seen the movie, The Decameron. Very interesting stuff. And we have Primo Levi's ethnographic account, but suddenly it's a diary. Now, what's the difference between a narrative of the kind we've been looking at, an Arieti's has some historical narration in it and diary. Well, a is all about how I went to high school, I got smart, and now you should let me into Santa Cruz, right? Or, I went to Santa Cruz, I got smart, and now you should let me into law school, because I know how to study, my character is crystallized, right? I've come of age. I've been initiated. All those things that only happen in Stevenson, but no other college. That was a joke. >> [LAUGH] >> You believed me. But, form is not in the diary. Diaries, and you've all read Anne Frank, and now you're reading Rifka Lipschitz's diary. A diary, we get glimpses, sort of the corner of our eye, we think maybe she'll become, maybe she'll live to, Anne Frank. Will she have friendship with? But it's in process, but it's not finished. It's present to us at this moment. So we have, if you will, the liminal moments. It could go either way, right? Rifka Lipschitz could get a bread ration or not. She could have. A good relationship with her cousins, with whom she's living, or not. Her friend's father could turn himself in, and then the friend who's been kept as a hostage till that happens will get released. We don't know. And so Primo Levi ends his diary in this either or, maybe. And Wiesel has about a page and a half about how Buchenweld is liberated but instead he tells us, I looked in the mirror and I saw a corpse. For him it's somehow over. Primo Levi it's what's happening, and Primo Levi will tell us that throughout his life he would wake up and never be sure that he wasn't back in the lager. Because this something has changed the context, that which makes sense of the world and in the world. And he still keeps thinking he's still in that situation. He's still there. The question we could ask this, is this almost mental illness, to have Arieti's question. So the question of how do we frame our world and reframe our situation having lived through a deframing, a decontextualization of something that makes everything that we know upside down, incredible. So these writers are all putting these questions to us. Think about the ending of Dry Tears. You remember the ending of Dry Tears. They go back and they discover, when they return to their home, that all the things that were familiar to them are being used by other people. And they quote that joke of many survivors when they returned, all the things I own your now wearing. Or, her account then goes on and says that they thought they were back in their home town. Their town. And suddenly there are reports of in Poland where a number of Jews are killed. And her father gets sick, you remember he had a cough he had to suppress when he was in hiding and now it's finally come at him. And the last lines are all about how she goes and visits her relatives in Israel as often as she can. And she lives in the United States. Wiesel, Arieti, live in the United States. Hamatets lives in the United States. The United States is now part of that which rebuilds Europe, something called the Marshall Plan. But it also says the is right, that liberal humanist Europe is gone. It's a different world, a new world. I was talking to someone outside before class who told me that after she graduates she wants to go and travel in Europe. Well, that Europe, is it still Europe? Or is it just a museum? I don't know, it's a question for you, it's a question these writers are asking in their [FOREIGN]. Mr Kenis here has a concluding comment. >> I do want to debate the point which Murray was just making about the death of the liberal civilization. >> European. >> Or European liberal civilization. It was a burp, to be sure It was a gap. Indeed, also, arguably, it showed the vulnerability of that civilization. But my goodness, the civilization came back. We have never lived in such a peaceful world since the end of the second World War as we do now. And in so many ways, which would be inappropriate to go into, we live in a far more humane world than what preceded the Nazis. So this is not the end of a liberal civilization. Now, since I have the last word, I don't like it, because I would like Murray to [CROSSTALK]. >> Oh, I will. >> To do comment. But there is another point which I'm thinking. You are reading literature. This is mostly what you are doing as what is studied. And of course, literature, some are great books, and what you get is an understanding of what was happening to those who were persecuted, and it is a complex question. But what we cannot get, perhaps because literature does not provide us, which is really a very interesting question, namely what kind of characters were those who were organizing and carrying out the task. We do get something. But I cannot think of a great piece of literature which would really elaborate the motives, the world view, the understanding of those that were responsible for the horrors. >> I think Arieti makes an effort but. Beasts, right? But the question I have is really a question to Peter. Why have no one of those perpetrators? [CROSSTALK] >> Ever written a great novel. >> A great novel, or a great history of why we did this. But I have one example. There's a movie called Kiss of the Spider Woman from a Latin American novel, and they quote this famous, basically quotes the famous speech of how hard it was to kill these people, but that this was a world historical thing that they were doing. They were rescuing civilization by doing that. And of course, he's quoting a famous Nazi. So this is one of the mysteries, it seems to me that we have to ask about. And that Arieti asked about when he says It was an epidemic of evil.
