Foreword to Diary of a Jewish Boy During
the Second World War by Marek Herman

The diary of a European Jew that covers the years of the Second World War is dramatic by definition. The fact that the author survived to write it is in itself evidence of either an extreme determination to live or extraordinary luck. In this diary by Marek Herman, however, there is little room for luck. Marek, “born in L’viv—which was in Poland—on October 15, 1927,” owes his survival, and the well-deserved peace he enjoys today, much more to his own virtues than to good fortune. His virtues, which he never boasts of but which shine through every line of this unadorned account, are intelligence, courage, perseverance, and an unbelievable strength of mind in an adolescent.

This strong, enterprising man displays an unusual modesty. He describes the innumerable trials to which fate subjected him without ever raising his voice either in complaint or in hatred. At the young age of fifteen he had already lost everything a man can lose: family, country, home, language. Yet, stubbornly, systematically, Marek clings to that atavistic hope which has sustained and unified Israel through the millennia. From this standpoint we have here a truly exemplary text. Marek never yields to desperation or sorrow, he never stops to weep over the ruins, he never doubts that life is worth living. Paradoxically, in his painful journey, there is much more room for gratitude and love than for bitterness. Evil is present, it pervades everything, disrupts everything around him, but Marek does not allow it to corrupt him. He always sees a way forward for himself; yet he is not a believer, he has no political North Star, and he comes late even to the Zionist creed, when the great tragedy of European Judaism is coming to an end.

Page after page, we follow him, starting in childhood—a childhood that, already before the war, unfolds in an atmosphere of Dickensian poverty, where bread (literally!) is won in a daily struggle against exhaustion, disease, and entrenched Polish anti-Semitism. There is a home, albeit limited to a single damp, crowded, and dreary room-workshop, and in this home there is the sweetness of family love. The war comes, the German invasion, and everything is swept away. One by one, family members disappear, and Marek learns precociously to live by his wits, until he is told that there is a barracks of Italians in L’viv. These soldiers are very different from the Germans, their formal allies. They are kindhearted and aren’t particular about military discipline, permissions, and prohibitions. In their barracks they shelter a dozen other young orphans, Jews and Christians. The Italians make no differentiation, and this surprises Marek; prudently, however, he conceals his Jewish identity and secures false “Aryan” papers.

When the Italians are demobilized and return to Italy, Marek follows them, and here begins his great adventure. Compared with Poland, the tragic Italy of 1943 appears to him a great country, rich and generous; everybody helps him and nobody betrays him. A peasant family in the Canavese region takes him in and treats him like a son. They even enroll him in a Salesian school where he learns how to serve at Mass—and he is “no worse than the others” at it. But shortly thereafter he comes into contact with Czech partisans and has no hesitation: he knows where right and wrong lie, he has an account to settle, and he becomes a partisan, even if he is “just a few centimeters taller than his rifle.” Within a short time, helped by his intelligence, eagerness, and knowledge of languages, he makes himself indispensable. He fights in the Orco, Lanzo, and Susa valleys, and is dazzled by the beauty of the mountains. He lives in an exciting new world filled with experiences that stir him and allow him to develop: the splendor of Creation, freedom, and faith in his fellow fighters. In the last few months, the American secret service entrusts Marek with a radio transmitter; on April 25 he is in Turin.

Thus ends Marek’s first exploit. A naïve soldier of fortune, like many distant travelers from the north, he had discovered Italy with a virgin eye and fought for the freedom of all in a country that was not his. Although he is a fundamentally gentle soul, Marek joined other battles, which he describes elsewhere—the battles that gave birth to the State of Israel, today his homeland. He now lives in the Lohamei Hagetaot kibbutz, which he helped establish. Every now and then, though, he comes back to Italy, to the Canavese, where everybody remembers him, and welcomes him like a brother. A polyglot, Marek no longer has a language that is truly his own. He wrote this memoir in Hebrew, the ancient language of the fathers, which was new to him, and which he didn’t start learning until 1946, when his Italian adventure had ended.

Foreword to Marek Herman, Da Leopoli a Torino: Diario di
un ragazzo ebreo nella seconda guerra mondiale (From L’viv to Turin: Diary of a Jewish Boy During the Second World War) (Cuneo: L’Arciere, 1984)