Was Lorenzo Perrone here?
A home.
A home?
What makes us human? People like Lorenzo Perrone.
I don't know anything about it.
Because he was a mason, and we learn from a mason. Having culture does not guarantee goodness, we know that from the Nazis.
What do we know about Lorenzo Perrone?
What is kindness? The answer to this question is Lorenzo Perrone. I immortalize him in a book: Un uomo de poche parole (A man of few words).
Here The man who saved Primo Levi.
This is what Perrone did in the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz III-Monowitz.
Was it where Primo Levi was?
A slave in Auschwitz (Poland) from March to December 1944, he was 25 years old and had the number 174517 tattooed on his forearm.
How did it get there?
An anti-fascist partisan, he was arrested and deported. He had to be gassed to death. Or beaten Or exhausted from work and hungry.
Why is Primo Levi relevant?
An anonymous boy in 1944, after the war he wrote If This Is a Man (1947), the most important book of the 20th century!
is it
Put humanity in front of the mirror. It has marked millions of minds and hearts: this book has shaped humanity.
And what role does the mason play?
He worked in the reconstruction of a bombed German factory next to the Auschwitz camp, works where free workers - like Lorenzo - and slaves - like Primo Levi - worked.
Did Perrone and Levi meet there?
The Piedmontese accent brought them closer... and the illiterate mason, in his 40s, decided to save the life of the anonymous Jewish youth.
With?
He gave him food in a lunchbox every day: soups, vegetables, biscuits... And that's why Primo Levi didn't starve!
Do they owe Levi’s work to Perrone?
Of course! If this is a man, being a man is still valuable and something good remains in the world, thought Primo Levi, who would later write The Truce and The Sunken and the Saved.
What was Lorenzo Perrone like?
Illiterate Of few words Refractory to authoritarians. He didn't say, he did! He was a drinker. He was looking for reasons.
Are you looking for reasons?
He was fighting in bars. His life was hard. He died aged just 48, worn out, tubercular... and alcoholic, in 1952.
What else do we know about Perrone and Levi in Auschwitz?
"You risk your life if you talk to me", warned Primo Levi, and so it was.
And what did Perrone say?
"I do not care". And he took more risks: he sent Primo Levi postcards to Turin...and the family sent him a package of clothes.
And he didn't ask for anything in return?
"My family will pay you, they have money", Primo Levi offered him one day. "I don't want anything", replied Lorenzo.
Why did Perrone act like this?
Because it was good.
Because it was good!
He decides that that young man is his friend, and for a friend, everything! He does what he has to do.
exciting story
At the end of 1944 they exchanged boots, this denotes deep brotherhood. Soviet troops were arriving and the Nazi guards were fleeing. And there they separated.
What did each do?
Lorenzo, walking from Poland!, returned to Italy. Many ex-prisoners died on foot marches to the south. Or when they were eating again. Levi survived again.
How did he survive?
In a group of inmates, on foot and in trains, they made many trips around Europe... until they arrived in Turin, months later.
How did Primo Levi's life go?
He served in the chemical industry until his retirement in 1977, while writing his illuminating books about Auschwitz.
I Lorenzo Perrone?
Itinerant painter, he continued to work on construction sites... without ceasing to enter the bars.
Why was Lorenzo Perrone good?
I still don't have an answer.
For the love of his mother, perhaps?
Hmm... Thanks! I'll think about it.
If there is goodness, is there evil?
There is evil and it is contagious, as observed by Primo Levi, a fine human ethologist. Evil spreads by contagion!
Did the two friends see each other again?
Yes! Primo Levi always spoke highly of Perrone. And in 1952 he attended his funeral dressed in white! He conveyed what he saw in Lorenzo Perrone: the absolute good.
This moves me, Greppi.
And me too. The great Primo Levi had a son...and he named him Renzo (Lorenzo). And a daughter, whom he named... Lisa Lorenza.
