Remembering Primo Levi on what would've been his birthday.
Italian-Jewish chemist Levi survived Auschwitz and went to write 'If This Is a Man', the last book to make me weep.
Born in Turin in 1919, prejudice followed Levi into his professional life, and the qualification “Of Jewish Race” that was printed on his diploma initially prevented him from finding work.
In 1943, Levi and his family fled to northern Italy, where he joined an Italian resistance group. However, when he and his comrades were arrested by Fascist forces later that year, Levi admitted he was a Jew to avoid being shot as a partisan and was sent to an Italian prison camp
The camp soon came under German control and Levi was deported to Auschwitz. Levi arrived at the concentration camp and the number 174517 was tattooed on his forearm.
In January 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz and Levi made his journey home. Of the more than 7,000 Italian Jews who had been deported to concentration camps during the war, Levi was among the fewer than 700 who survived.
Levi died in 1987 after a fall from a third-story apartment. His death was ruled a suicide, but some suggest it was accidental. He left no suicide note, there were no witnesses, and he was on medication that could've affected his blood pressure and caused him to fall accidentally
This is a poem Levi wrote and this is the book I mentioned.
If you can, I urge you to read both.
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"You used to always say to me, 'Let’s live together until our hair turns white and die on the same day.' So how could you go ahead and leave me behind?" Letter by a woman to her deceased husband, discovered in the man's grave along with a lock of her hair. Korea, 1586.
This letter was discovered while relocating an unmarked grave to make way for construction work in 1998. Rough translation:
To Won’s Father
You used to always say to me, “Let’s live together until our hair turns white and die on the same day.” So how could you go ahead and
leave me behind? Who are our child and I supposed to listen to? How are we supposed to live, now that you’ve thrown everything away and gone ahead of me?
What were the feelings you had for me and what were the feelings I had for you? Every day when the two of us were lying down
Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer, and political prisoner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died on this day in 2008.
Understand Solzhenitsyn’s history and you’ll understand a bit of Russia and its history.
Arrests, gulags, war, this guy was METAL!
A short 🧵
While serving in the Soviet army he sent a letter to a friend criticising Stalin but at the same time outlining why he was an avid supporter of Lenin’s ideas.
That letter got him an 8-year sentence in forced labour camps.
Solzhenitsyn began his sentence building houses in Moscow for a year. But after falling out with wardens he was transferred to a hard labour camp in north Kazakhstan, where he witnessed some of the most brutal hardships of the Gulag.
The novelist, playwright and activist James Baldwin was born #OTD in 1924.
His work raises questions and dilemmas about complex social pressures thwarting the integration of not only Black Americans, but also gay and bisexual men
Read 'Go Tell It on the Mountain'...
Also, published on this day in 1865 was Alice in Wonderland.
Sex, drugs, jokes, food, death... what's it actually all about? dannydutch.com/post/alice-in-…
On this day in 1945, after 3½ days of suffering exhaustion, lack of water and shark attacks in the Philippine Sea, the surviving crew of USS Indianapolis are spotted by Wilbur “Chuck” Gwinn, 890 crew went into the water, 316 had survived. dannydutch.com/post/the-uss-i…
Photographer Horace Warner took these portraits to highlight the East End living conditions in 1900. Horace was the Sunday School Superintendent of the Bedford Institute, one of nine Quaker missions in the East End.
At first, all he wanted to do was record the children’s lives, but in 1913 around two dozen of the photographs were used by Quaker activists to raise funds for poor relief. The rest of Warner’s archive was preserved by his family after his death in 1937
Journalist Fred McKenzie filed a report in 1901, a description of just one road around the district’s famous Christ Church, an architectural gem designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Let us take a moment on what would've been Fellini's birthday and celebrate some stills from his work over the years.
(A short thread)
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Starting with 1980's City of Women
Director of Photography: Giuseppe Rotunno
8 1/2
1963
Director of Photography: Gianni Di Venanzo
La Dolce Vita
1960
Director of Photography: Otello Martelli