Before the current confusion of reforms, obtaining a high school diploma was an undertaking that made one tremble—it was a decathlon. The candidate was required to complete four written exams and an oral exam in every subject covered in three years of high school: in practice, a summary of everything that is known to mankind. Thus, by the day of the first exam, one would be completely exhausted, in a state both frantic and fatalistic, since it was clear to everyone that luck played a major role in the final results.
In July of 1936, precisely two days before my first exam, the written exam in Italian, I received a menacing red postcard from the Ministry of War: the following day I was to report to the seaplane station (the one on the Po River, from which the seaplane leaves for Venice: how many Turinese remember it?) for an urgent message. I went there full of foreboding and found myself in the company of another teenager, who (I never discovered why) was also called Levi, before a giant in a Fascist uniform who assailed us with an avalanche of insults, accusations, and threats.
He was red in the face, in a fit of rage; he accused us of nothing less than attempted desertion. We were both cowards: according to him, we hadn’t responded to a previous call, clearly intending to avoid military service in the Royal Navy. Yes, because our two names, of all names, had been drawn in the Turin lottery for the Navy draft. No one could save us from twenty-four months of service.
I didn’t even know how to swim at the time, and though I had read Stevenson and Defoe, the prospect of becoming a sailor struck me as absurd and frightening. I went home terrified; the next day, I turned in an Italian exam that was insubstantial and incoherent, so much so that, in all fairness, I got a very low mark, was not allowed to take the oral exam, and was told to return in October. It was the first bad grade in my impeccable academic career, and it felt pretty much like a death sentence. I passed the other exams thanks only to an exhausting effort.
We held a family council; my father, poor man, already gravely ill, set about making the rounds of the relevant authorities, from the military recruiting office to the chief magistrate, from the Superintendent of Education to the Fascist Federation. What came of it was a paradoxical solution, a preemptive strike: I would avoid the Navy draft by enlisting as soon as possible in the pre-military course at the Voluntary Militia for National Security—in other words, the Fascist militia.
Thus, the following fall, once I had passed my Italian exam, I enrolled in the university and found myself in the position of university soldier. At the time I was neither Fascist nor anti-Fascist. Wearing a uniform gave me no sense of pride; rather, I found it somehow annoying (especially the boots). But I have to admit that I didn’t dislike marching in step, in close order, especially to band music. It was a dance, and it gave me the sensation of belonging to a human alliance, of merging with a unified group. I later learned that Einstein declared he could not understand the type of man who took pleasure in marching in step. Well, at the time I was that type, even if seven years later some other marching in step made me change my mind radically.
So there I was, a soldier, all decked out in alpine hat, eagle, fasces, gray-green jacket and pants, and black shirt. The routine of pre-military education should have enabled me to predict much of what was to come after Italy entered the war, in 1940: suffice it to say that throughout the entire course I neither fired a single shot nor saw even from a distance what the cartridge clips of the extremely heavy Model 91 rifle looked like.
The muster was on Saturday afternoons in the courtyard of the university on Via Po, where, in one of the corridors, the armory of the University Militia was situated. We had to show up in uniform, and each of us was given a rifle; the bayonet—with its two lateral grooves “so that the blood can drain away”—was fixed to the muzzle, and the loop of the bayonet sheath was threaded through the belt, along with cartridge pouches meant to hold ammunition but naturally empty. Once our belts were on, we would fill the cartridge pouches with bread and salami for snack time; the smokers used them for cigarettes. Pre-military training consisted solely of the tedious close-order drills and long walks in the hills that would have been pleasant if it hadn’t been for the loathsome boots that chafed our ankles and feet raw.
If I am not mistaken, I was the only true university student in my squad. The others were studying geometry or accounting, and had all enrolled in the University Militia for the various worldly advantages that could be gained from it—not one had joined out of Fascist beliefs. Because they were the same height as me, four shrewd, friendly boys—all a little frisky—were always near me in the squad, and with the aid of their rifles they kept themselves entertained by playing the part of Fra Diavolo.1 They called one another Canù Vacché (Wizened Cowboy), Cravé (Cravero) Bastard,* Comi Schifús, and Simoncelli Struns2: as in Homeric texts, these were fixed attributes and were an integral part of their names—like honorary titles.
Comi Schifús in fact was an old acquaintance. He had been a classmate of mine in elementary school, and already then was trying his very best to be gross: he was the only one in our entire class who could lick the soles of his shoes—without taking them off, of course. It pleases me to mention the names of these faraway comrades in arms, in the event that any of them should recognize himself here. One had composed amiably obscene verses in which the surreal names of the parts of the above-mentioned rifle recurred: “dog collar sling,” “butt plate,” “nose cap,” and others I can’t recall because, as a matter of fact, we had never taken a rifle apart. The rifle was intended less as a weapon than as a dead weight, useful only in hampering our movements.
As a result of the racial laws, my military career didn’t last long: in September 1938, I was asked to turn in my uniform, and I did so without regrets. But when, in 1945, I returned from captivity in Germany, I discovered that the specter of military service in the Navy had not vanished: I appeared to be still registered for the naval draft. I was called to the recruiting office to restate my position, stripped naked, and subjected to the statutory medical exam with the recruits of ’27. I was in pretty bad shape, but the doctor wanted to declare me fit for service. A negotiation ensued: strange as it may seem, I did not possess any documents to attest to my year in Auschwitz, except for the number tattooed on my arm. After long explanations and pleading, the doctor agreed first to classify me as temporarily unfit for service, and then to let me out definitively. Thus ended my brief military career.
La Stampa, December 14, 1986
1. Fra Diavolo (literally, Brother Devil) was the popular name given to Michele Pezza, an Italian outlaw who resisted the French occupation of Naples and is remembered in folk legends and in the novels of Alexandre Dumas as a guerrilla leader.
2. “Schifús” is a distorted version of schifo, which means “disgusting”; “Struns” is a distortion of stronzo, which literally means “turd” and is used vulgarly to indicate someone who is mean.