Re: [OPE-L] Roman Rosdolsky on the Holocaust, from his own experience

From: Francisco Paulo Cipolla (cipolla@UFPR.BR)
Date: Mon Dec 18 2006 - 08:53:10 EST


So Rosdolsky might have known Primo Levi, who was also spared due to his
knowledge of chemestry. Of all the books I read on the the topic Levis
sequence seems to be the most profound in reflexion and analysis: "If that is
man?" (original title in Italian: Se questo  luomo?); "The saved and the
drowned" (original title in Italian: I salvati e i sommersi);"The truce" (in
Italian: La tregua). This last book was turned into a movie as well. I seems
that a soccer game between the germans and the prisonners in 1944 mentioned by
Levi triggered a recent book by Facchetti: "Bundesliga 1944" written and
published in Italy.
Paulo

glevy@PRATT.EDU wrote:

> Jurriaan:
>
> Thanks, that made gripping reading.  What I can't understand is how he
> made it out of the camps alive. According to the article, he was arrested
> by the Gestapo for aiding Jews.   That, of and in itself, often meant
> immediate execution.  And the following makes it clear that he already had
> a long history as a revolutionary socialist.  Didn't the Gestapo know who
> they arrested?  It's hard to believe that his skill as a carpenter (I
> wonder if he had any real carpentry skills beforehand or whether he had to
> fake it initially and learn *quickly* with the support and protection of
> other prisoners) was enough to save him.
>
> In solidarity, Jerry
>
> Roman Rosdolsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> <snip>
> As a youth, Rosdolsky was a member of the Ukrainian socialist Drahomanov
> Circles. He was drafted in the imperial army in 1915, and edited with
> Roman Turiansky the journal Klyči in 1917. He was a founder of the
> International Revolutionary Social Democracy (IRSD) and studied law in
> Prague. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
> of Eastern Galicia, representing its emigré organization 1921-1924 and a
> leading publicist of the Vasylkivtsi faction of the Ukrainian Communists.
> In 1925, he refused to condemn Trotsky and his Left Opposition, and was
> later, at the end of the 1920s, expelled from the Communist Party.
>
> In 1926-1931, he was correspondent in Vienna of the Marx-Engels Institute
> in Moscow, searching for archival materials. At that time, in 1927, he met
> his wife Emily. When the labour movement in Austria suffered repression,
> he emigrated in 1934 back to L'viv, where he worked at the university as
> lecturer. He published the Trotskyist periodical Žittja i slovo
> 1934-1938, and was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942, but survived
> internment in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and
> Oranienburg. <snip>


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