The evil of our time
“If I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen”. The man is sitting in front of us in the medical place for psychological assistance. It is a small plastic module and the heat is suffocating. We are in the desert, a few kilometres from Agadez, in the camp set up by UNHCR for refugees fleeing Libya. The man, Sudanese, is thirty, maybe forty years old; tells us of how he escaped from Darfur, where his village was destroyed and part of his family exterminated. He lost other loved ones, a son and a brother, in a Libyan kidnapping camp where he remained almost a year. He then escaped into Algeria, because the access to the Libyan coasts and to Europe was blocked.  Here, he was also pushed back, and forced to march through the Sahara to Agadez in Niger. The man has lost everything; people, things, land. He tells his story in a regular, monotonous tone of voice, in an absolute silence in which even the breath of us doctors seems to have stopped. It seems that his voice should break at any moment and transform, if not into cry, then tears. But it doesn’t happen. At the end, his gaze appears lost, his eyes empty, his body lean and folded back on himself. From a corner of my memory the description of a man in Auschwitz emerges, in If this is a man of Primo Levi.

For every generation there is a moment in which every certainty crumbles and what is human seems to vanish. For us, that moment arrived in the daily meeting with migrant men, women and children who survived the atrocities committed in the torture camps in Libya and on the migratory routes of the 21st century. They will say that the comparison of the kidnapping camps and the Libyan detention centres in which at least one million people have been held for weeks, months or years since 2011, with the Holocaust and Hitler’s extermination camps, is totally spurious given the historical and objective incomparability of the two events. Maybe, probably. I will let those who read these lines judge for themselves. I will only list a few occasions (unfortunately the examples would be much more, given the countless testimonies of atrocities heard as a doctor and psychotherapist over these recent years) in which the stories and evidence gathered directly by the Medici per i Diritti Umani (Doctors for Human Rights, Italy) operators from the survivors reminded me of the words of Primo Levi, through a powerful association mechanism. I do this, I admit, because of a compelling personal need, not pretending that the associations in my head always have an indisputable objective force.

Sonderkommandos (special squads)
This was the name used by the SS to describe in a deliberately vague manner, the groups of prisoners who were forced to take care of the crematoria in Auschwitz and in the other Nazi lagers. ” Conceiving and organizing the squads (sonderkommandos, ed) was National Socialism’s most demonic crime…This institution represented an attempt to shift onto others – specifically, the victims – the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence. It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi).  “I worked for the Libyan police but it wasn’t really a job. They used me, I couldn’t refuse. When I tried to refuse, they beat me violently and threatened to kill me. My job was to recover the bodies from the sea, the bodies of my brothers who had died during shipwrecks. I recovered them and then I had to bury them. In those two years I have counted about 3,000 bodies. I ended up getting used to it. In the end I didn’t have any emotion, I didn’t get upset anymore. It was only in front of women who were visibly pregnant or the bodies of children that I have never been able to get used to it.” (L., 17 years old, from Gambia, testimony collected at the Hotspot of Pozzallo, October 2017).

Shame and guilt
“Leaving pain behind was a delight for only a few fortunate beings, or only for a few instants, or for very simple souls; almost always it coincided with a phase of anguish… In my opinion, the feeling of shame or guilt that coincided with the reacquired freedom was extremely composite: it contained diverse elements, and in different proportions for each individual … one suffered because of the reacquired consciousness of having been diminished. Not by our will, cowardice, or fault, yet nevertheless, we had lived for months and years at an animal level ” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). “Near the city of Ajdabiya we were kidnapped by Daesh militants (the self-proclaimed Islamic State, n.r.) and for 3 months they held us hostage. At first they mistreated us with guns, knives, they urinated on us, and did everything they wanted without mercy. We slept huddled in a shed without eating and without drinking. I am a Christian, but when I realized that the only way to save my life was to convert, I did it … “(MI, from Eritrea, 22 years old, testimony collected in Medu mobile clinic, Rome, November 2015). “From there, I was taken to Al-Khums prison, far from Tripoli. There were over 300 people in each room, there was no space to lie down and sleep. They gave us little water and little food. Every day at 1pm they brought us a piece of bread and a glass of water. This was all we received for all the 8 months I was detained in there. “(A. D, 20 years old, from Gambia, testimony collected at the CAS of Canicarao, Ragusa, November 2014).

“More realistic is self-accusation, or the accusation, of having failed in terms of human solidarity … almost everybody feels guilty of having omitted to offer help … Are you ashamed because you are alive in place of another? And in particular, of a man more generous, more sensitive, more useful, wiser, worthier of living than you? … it is a supposition but it gnaws at us; it has nestled deeply like a woodworm … (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). “The place, where we were kept prisoners was a few kilometers from the sea, in Al Zawiya. That evening the guards entered in the big room, where we were huddled, to take away the bodies of some of us; then they began to beat wildly some of the new arrivals who, according to them, did not obey orders quickly enough. My friend and I took advantage of the bustle; the door had remained half open. We started running without looking back, with all the strength we still had in our legs. We were almost safe in a field of olive trees when a burst of machine gun struck my friend. He fell to the ground. I stopped for a moment, then started running again because the guards were coming. I cry now just as I did then. I will take him with me for as long as I live.”(A., 20 years old, from Sierra Leone, testimony collected at the Medu Psychè Center, Rome, September 2017).

“And there is another, vaster shame, the shame of the world … there are those who, faced by the crime of others, or their own, turn their backs, so as not to see it and not feel touched by it … deluding themselves that not seeing is a way of not knowing” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). The shame of the world, of course. Of Italy, of Europe, of the international community. Our shame that is the obstinacy to not wanting to see who is on the other side of the sea, not to know, to decline any responsibility. Or wanting to believe, beyond all evidence, that it is all fake, and all propaganda because in reality “here we see fake refugees, young athletes with the latest mobile phones and gold chains”. Anyone with government responsibility, any citizen worthy of the name, before making judgments and taking action should reflect on how the worst crimes of the contemporary world have always been the subject of disbelief and all kinds of denial; they should be at least in doubt before shouting them own verdict.

Useless violence
“Useless violence, an end in itself, aimed solely to the creation of pain; sometimes aimed to a purpose, but always redundant, always disproportionate to the purpose itself” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). “Libya was hell. I’m damned, I’m just damned. They caught me at Sabha (city in southwestern Libya, ed) and took me to prison, they wanted money from me. I was in prison for seven months: from September 2016 to April 2017. They did everything to me! Every day the guards took us and brought us to satisfy their desires. They took me from the front, from behind, they were so violent that afterwards I had difficulty even sitting down. They filmed me while they raped me. They urinated on me! One day they forced me to have a sexual intercourse with a dog and they filmed me. I am damned “(N. S., from the Ivory Coast, 40 years old, testimony collected at the CARA of Mineo, June 2017). “The guards enjoyed seeing us suffer. They brought us food once a day and while they gave it to us they tortured us with electric shocks. For 3 months I was beaten every day. The guards came, made me take off my shirt and beat me on the back with a stick, they said that without clothes it hurt more and they had fun. Sometimes instead of beating me they burned me, they heated an iron and they put it on me”. (G.O., 19 years old, from Nigeria, testimony collected at the Pozzallo Hotspot in Sicily, August 2017). “We lived in terror also because it seemed that the jailers did us harm for fun or for their own pleasure. Sometimes in the night they came drunk and if someone passed they shot. Sometimes they let people bleeding to death. ” (O., 18 years old, from Nigeria, testimony collected at the Pozzallo Hotspot, September 2017).

“Defecate in public was agonizing or impossible: a trauma to which our civilization does not prepare us, a deep wound inflicted on human dignity, an obscene and foreboding attack; but also the sign of a deliberate and gratuitous malignancy ” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). “The food was prepared in the same containers used for washing and urinating. The guards of the centre mixed the excrement that the children did in the garbage with the food and we were forced to eat that food also because we had been fasting for days or weeks. “(M., from the Ivory Coast, 38 years old, testimony collected at the CARA of Mineo, August 2017).

Kapo
“(The Kapos, ed) were free to commit the worst atrocities on their subjects as punishment, for any transgressions, or even without any reason whatsoever: until the end of 1943 it was not unusual for a prisoner to be beaten to death by a Kapo without the latter having to fear any sanctions.” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). “I specify that I was in Sabha in the Nigerian ghetto and the head of the centre was a Nigerian man called Rambo. I then learned that there were ghettos for each nationality, but all were part of the great Ghetto of Alì. Each ghetto had a chief, often of the same nationality of the prisoners, who depended on the Libyan masters. Every day we suffered atrocious violence. Rambo was a constant presence. He was there at the head count and personally proceeded to torture the prisoners who did not pay to be released “(W., 20 years old, from Nigeria, testimony collected at the Medu Psychè Center in Rome, December 2017).

The purposes of the system
“Unpaid work, that is slavery, was one of the three aims of the concentration camp system (Nazi camps, ed); the other two were the elimination of political opponents and the extermination of the so-called inferior races … the Soviet concentration camp regime differed from the Nazi regime due to the lack of the third aim and the prevalence of the first one ” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). Extortion of money and slave labour are the main purposes of the Libyan prison camps and detention centres. As in the Soviet gulags, death is therefore “a by-product” while in Hitler’s extermination camps it was the ultimate goal. “I was imprisoned for 2 years. They brought us nothing to eat. They brought us food every other day and the food was just a tiny piece of bread. During these two years they beat me a lot, every day. And they never made me stand up, I was forced to always sit. I started not being able to use my legs well. I cannot stretch my legs anymore, I cannot walk or even stand. When I was in prison I could not move at the end. I could not even get on the boat that took me to safety. A friend had to pick me up … These people wanted a ransom from me but I did not know how to pay. If I am free today it is because they gave me up for lost, they thought I was very close to death. That’s why they freed me. They thought they could not get anything else from me. “(A., 20 years old, from Somalia, testimony collected at the Pozzallo Hotspot, November 2017).

Although this is not a fundamental aspect, the motive for hatred and racial contempt is also traceable in many of the atrocities committed in Libya. “The treatment that is reserved for Eritreans and Somalis is not the same. Eritreans in general are treated a little better, but Somalis are massacred. There is no food and water for anyone. But the Somalis suffer more violence and cruelty. These things are done by Walid and his many men. They enjoy seeing us suffer. They usually come in the morning and spend the whole morning playing with us. They force us to hurt each other. For example, if they notice that two people are wife and husband, they ask one to beat the other as hard as possible. Or if a person is very ill the guards go there and say “You are neither alive nor dead, you have to decide”. And then they beat them violently. So the person has to choose whether to be able to get up and continue to live or let themselves go and die. “(G., 18 years old, from Eritrea, testimony collected at the Pozzallo Hotspot, November 2017). “I was in the hands of Libyan criminals and militiamen for four years. I had to work as a slave. I suffered endless violence. But the thing that still hurts me the most is that they prevented me from practicing my religion. They said that a Negro cannot be a true Muslim. “(S., 31 years old, from Guinea, testimony collected at the Medu Psychè Center in Rome, November 2017).

Human and inhuman
They were not of “a perverse human substance, different from ours (the sadists, the psychopaths there were also among them, but they were few): simply they were rather dull brutes than subtle demons. They were educated to violence: violence ran in their veins, it was normal, obvious.” (The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi). Auschwitz will return? It was one of the most frequently asked questions addressed to Primo Levi and to the other survivors of the Holocaust. Here the Libyan lagers show perhaps the most disturbing aspect: even without the deadly Nazi ideology, parts of that monster can return at other times and with different people. The reader will have noticed that the testimonies reported in these lines stop in December 2017. The Libyan lagers are still there, intact machines of pain and death. Simply the migrants who reach Italy and Europe from Libya are enormously less today. As Levi wrote, “uncomfortable truths have a difficult path”.

We thank Carlo Tramontano and Lydia Witt for the revision of the English text. A special thanks to Bianca Maria Sagone.

Since 2014, Medici per i Diritti Umani – MEDU (Doctors for Human Rights Italy) has been managing medical-psychological programs in Italy, Egypt and Niger to support migrants and refugees who have survived torture and intentional violence. The web map Esodi contains thousands of testimonies collected on the migratory routes from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe.