This morning, I read a chapter from Primo Levi’s “Moments of Reprieve”, in particular the chapter entitled “Story of a Coin”. It was about the elder of Jews in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland - Chiam Rumkowski. In essence, it was about a man who was driven enough by the lust of power to confer titles on himself, mint coins with his image and establish some sort of Praetorian Guard to protect his personage. As one reads the dispassionate and quiet narrative of Levi’s prose, one cannot help but feel reviled by the absurdity the entire situation and how, even when one lives amongst a community consigned to eventual extermination, the seductions of power and other such ephemeral things remain strong and unyielding.
