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Rating: I don't know how many documents exist regarding the concentration camp experience, whether it be German, Russian, or any other. I believe there are countless. Many in the past and others still today continue to testify and recount what they experienced firsthand or heard, always creating works that must be approached with caution, just like the topic being addressed. This is because talking about lager or gulag is always something complicated where there can be no justifications.
Many times we have heard this subject spoken of in contemptuous, derogatory tones. The clear condemnation of all that happened and the utter revulsion towards the "final solution." Many scholars have discussed it in anthropological terms, others in philosophical terms, and still others have merely described what happened inside these "micro societies." Eraldo Affinati, in his book Campo del sangue, speaks to us about the concentration camp experience despite not having lived it, but recounting it through his journey, undertaken as a "path of suffering," from Venice to Auschwitz.
Accompanied only by a friend, Eraldo undertakes this journey to try and understand the hardship of those who were deported for endless train days to Nazi concentration camps. His journey consists mostly of long days on foot, across half of Europe to reach the destination, the grimmest place in the recent history of humanity. During this "journey of redemption," Eraldo recounts the death of his grandfather, killed for being an ardent partisan and convinced antifascist, while his mother miraculously managed to save herself.
In this narrative work, which presents itself as a logbook, its author references countless other writers: Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, Robert Antelme, Albert Camus, Leon Poliakov, Alain Badiou, Theodore Adorno, Raul Hilberg, and many others, also touching on cinema, literature, music, all linked to the experience lived by Jews in the camps. An experience described to us through strong words that do not leave us indifferent.
One of the most complicated topics in the world history of all time is that of the programmed destruction of Jews. An event that countless scholars, writers, commentators, art people, politicians have tried to address in order to decipher the why of all this. I don’t know if there will ever be a joint opinion that verifies the cause, the purpose, and the ideas at the base of all this, but Eraldo Affinati's book is a read that, without being too demanding, provides some answers. A book that can be read in one breath thanks to a simple writing style, though at times it tangles in continuous references to the past or the cited authors. Affinati touches on a great variety of themes, some treated in a philosophical way, showing us a very free approach to writing, not bound to the "documentation" of what he saw and perceived during his journey. This is precisely one of the elements that struck me the most about Campo del sangue: in his journey towards Auschwitz, it almost seems as if the surrounding landscape reflects the pain he has seen. The closer you get to the destination, the darker, more charred everything becomes, with dilapidated factories, abandoned villages, and nature in decay. You approach the place of no-hope, the place where man erased man. In dignity, in life, in humanity...
There will never be an answer to all this.
"We marched past the Blocks in perfect silence, shoulder to shoulder, like workers who have exhausted overtime. I thought: this is the body of the Twentieth Century, the field of blood, the true stone garden of the time we have lived." (Eraldo Affinati)
"The outward appearance of the Muslim expressed perfectly the process of dehumanization it had been subjected to. In the final stage of physical decay, indeed, his bones were covered with a withered skin similar to parchment; edemas formed on the feet and thighs, while the surviving muscles on the buttocks appeared completely emaciated, the skull seemed to elongate, the nose dripped mucus onto the chin, the eyeballs sank deeply into their sockets, the gaze became apathetic; the limbs moved slowly, hesitantly, almost mechanically. A penetrating stench emanated from that figure: sweat, urine, and liquid feces ran down the legs. The rags in which he sought shelter from the cold were full of lice; the skin was infested by scabies." (cited in the book, Wolfgang Sofsky)
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