Extras - Chris Gavin

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Primo Levi: Background to Song

The song was inspired by The Truce, which is the sequel to If This Is A Man. The latter details Levi's time in Auschwitz, whereas The Truce tells the story of his long journey back to Italy at the end of the war.

Listen to a short sample from this song, Primo Levi (mp3, 1.2mb) or read the lyrics.

In chapter 4, Katowice, Levi describes Gallina who he met at a transit camp:

Galina had not even the shade of a worry. One met her in the morning going to the laundry with a bundle of washing balanced on her head, singing like a thrush; or in the offices of the Command H Q barefooted, hammering away at a typewriter; or on Sundays walking along the boulevard, arm in arm with a soldier, never the same one; or in the evening on the balcony, romantically entranced, while a smitten Belgian, in rags, serenaded her on the guitar. She was a country girl, alert, ingenious, a bit of a flirt, very vivacious, not particularly well educated, or particularly serious; yet one felt in her the same force, the same dignity as in her comrades and boyfriends, the dignity of a person who works and knows why, of a person who fights and knows that they are in the right, of a person who has their life ahead of them.

In the middle of May, a few days after the end of the war, she came to say good-bye to me. She was leaving: they had told her she could go home. Did she have a travel-warrant? Did she have her train fare? 'No,' she replied smiling, 'Nye, nada,' there was no need, in these matters one always found a way out; and she disappeared, sucked up into the emptiness Russian space, along the paths of her endless country, leaving behind her a sharp scent of earth, of youth and of joy.