If these are men – the Republic

The Russian paratrooper forces capture a group of Ukrainian men who are led in a row towards a courtyard where they will be executed shortly after: the men – the caption says – walk hunched over, with one arm on their head and the other holding the belt of their partner in front. .

No violence resembles another, no horror is related to another; History repeats itself but not identical to itself, and rather it must be said that, for better or for worse, the human repeats itself. Comparisons and parallels make no sense. And to ask oneself, in front of images like this, whether these are men, presupposes – before Levi’s tormenting question – the implicit answer is inevitable: yes, they are. They are men.
If anything – to keep to the reflection that Levi takes to the extreme in that last and extraordinary book which is “The drowned and the saved” – the word shame should be evoked.

And there is another broader shame, the shame of the world. It has been memorably said by John Donne, and cited countless times, by the way and by the way, that no man is an island, and that every death bell rings for everyone. Yet there are those who turn their backs when faced with the fault of others, or their own, so as not to see it and not feel touched by it.