Hello everyone!
I have something slightly different for you today.
After taking it up a notch with my Tuesday blog post, I'm going in and keeping it extra real with this one tonight, because every once in a while I reach for a book that's slightly different from anything else I've read.
It also usually covers some sort of war aspect, too.
I've done a couple of these on the blog since I started, but I do feel like I should maybe do a few more as well, given that this is a topic that should never be forgotten, ever.
And one of the best ways to do it is if you know specific authors who write magnificent books about it.
Boris Pahor, one of my fellow countrymen, is one of them.
God bless him for his long, fruitful life. He has a collection of books mostly dealing with World War II era in the Trieste region, and I've read a number of them already.
Tre Volte No is just another in a long, long line.
Links to the ones I'd done already will be found at the bottom of the page, as always.
But as for Tre Volte No - it's the Italian title meaning 'Three Times No' in direct translation, as I'm not entirely sure if an English one exists. I think it might, this books seems like the kind you'd really want in post-war collections.
Unlike his other, more fictional books (fictional in the sense that he doesn't write in first person but applies his experiences through the eyes of made up characters) this one is a memoir, and indeed a subtitle in my own language can be added:
Memories of a Free Man.
It covers three eras from right before World War II and up until the very modern days only about thirty or so years ago.
He talks about Fascism, Nazism and Communism, and you can bet this isn't going to be a walk in the park.
Anyone who's ever heard of either of these three can tell you as much.
When it comes to Pahor specifically, I think what's even more touching and horrific is that he was actually there and lived it - and so this is his experience, through his own eyes.
During the Fascism era, he was a young boy going through school, and when the movement began it started stripping the region he lived in, specifically the city, Trieste, which had been dual lingual for as long as one could remember, of everything that had to do with Slovene nationality.
I'm not going to go into details, because it turned out to be pretty brutal. I'm only going to mention the burning of several culturally important Slovene buildings and harsh methods that included prohibition of language in public and schools, among other things.
Try to imagine it.
They were stripping the very identity from the people who lived there.
Nazism wasn't much better, except that it came to fruition during the height of World War II, which means that we cover the fighting AND the concentration camps in this particular section of the book, and if you've never read or spoken about any of it before, I suggest you bring along a strong, cast iron stomach.
Because reading about those poor souls with no shoes during winter months and regular inspections and shavings is something you might have nightmares about, even if it sounds so innocent on paper.
And as for Communism ...
This was a different ballgame altogether, because it became a political machination and a game of the ruling party to control the narrative and deliver what they believed was best, but in doing so perpetrate some of the most horrible post-war crimes history has ever known.
Wars are ugly, no one disputes that.
And the time right after a war might be even uglier.
And the time right after a war might be even uglier.
And if you get banned from entering a country simple for speaking out about it, you KNOW it's bad.
I cried a number of times reading this book. I had to put it down a couple of times as well, and it's only about one hundred pages long.
It's one of those things you can't just leaf through in good conscience, because your conscience demands that you sit up and listen.
There are similar things to what's in this book happening today, and it's terrifying that people seem to have forgotten, and their memories are so incredibly short.
Any kind of totalitarianism is a bad form, but repeating past mistakes is even worse.
I think everyone should read books like Tre Volte No, books that cover their own country and their own history, and which serve as a reminder. This one is a prime example, but there are countless others to reach for to refresh your memory, something that I strongly believe should always be done.
Because we should never, ever forget.
xx
*images not mine
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