The Truce

Cesare is one of the central characters of the book through his relationship with Levi. In effect, Cesare is a petty criminal. After surviving the camps, he travels home alongside Levi and, during the journey, makes money through a series of schemes and deceits. These scams come naturally to Cesare and, even though Levi disapproves of such behavior, Cesare is rarely condemned by his fellow survivors. Instead, he is almost universally liked by those around him. Other than his rival criminals and those whom he has scammed, most people are fond of Cesare. He is charismatic. The nicknames he gives to people provide entertainment on the long, aimless train rides while his constant talking keeps the mood positive even as events turn against the survivors.

The tolerance of Cesare’s petty criminality reflects the extent to which the survivors’ worldviews have been realigned. In Italy, before the war, Cesare would have been considered a criminal and been socially ostracized. For those who have witnessed the crimes of the Holocaust up close, however, Cesare’s antics seem utterly trivial. His schemes pale in comparison to the death and destruction carried out by the Nazis, so—to the survivors of the camps—his antics come almost as a relief.

Cesare is notable in his egalitarianism. Unlike the Holocaust, which targets groups of minorities with precise violence, Cesare is an equal opportunities criminal. He will scam anyone, whether they are a Russian soldier, a Polish peasant, or a fellow survivor. He does not let language or culture stand in the way of a good scheme, often enlisting Levi to translate for him. At the same time, however, Cesare is not without remorse. He schemes to make himself money, but this selfishness does not define him. One day, Levi says, Cesare returns to the camp, and Levi learns that Cesare took pity on a starving family and gave them all the fish he planned to sell. This selfless act shows Cesare’s capacity for empathy, while his sense of shame and embarrassment about his own benevolence suggest that he did not help the family out of his own self-interest. As much as he would like to present himself as a self-interested criminal and confidence trickster, Cesare cannot help but take pity on suffering people. This, again, distinguishes him from the preparators of the Holocaust.

As the repatriation of the Italian survivors continues over the course of many months, Cesare becomes frustrated. When the train heads north, rather than south, he cannot stand the absurdity and the confusion any longer. He prepares to desert his friends, insisting that he will make his own way back to Italy. He leaves and, as Levi explains, makes his own way back to Italy. In doing so, he places himself in charge of his own fate, rather than surrendering his agency to the Soviets. In this way, Cesare’s desire to control his own story illustrates his trauma. He refuses to have his life dictated again, as it was in the camps. Levi respects this demand for agency, only providing hints as to the broad outline of Cesare’s journey: Like the journey itself, the story is Cesare’s to have and share as he sees fit.

Mordo Nahum is a Greek man who travels with Primo Levi for a short time after they leave the concentration camps. Mordo is one of the first people whom Levi encounters in his post-Auschwitz life. That he is not Italian is significant: As a Greek survivor of the camps, Mordo introduces an international element to the descriptions of suffering, broadening the horizon of pain of those affected by the Holocaust. The camps have imbued Mordo with a fierce determination to survive by any means necessary, leading him to develop his own personal ideology of work. Ironically, as Levi notes, the gates to Auschwitz were emblazoned with a motto, telling entrants that “Work Gives Freedom” (193).

Once freed, Mordo dedicates himself to work. His idea of work, however, is deeply personal. He will not perform manual labor: He believes that buying and selling is a more respectable form of work, so he tells Levi that they must go about trading to keep themselves alive during their journey home. Everything is geared toward profit: Mordo is only satisfied with a deal if he is the clear victor, gaining his profit at the expense of another. This zero-sum ideology of work and life drives Mordo forward, compelling him to enrich himself to survive.

Mordo and Levi part ways early in the book, though they are eventually thrown together one last time. They meet during an intersection of their respective journeys. By this time, Mordo’s pursuit of profit has put him in a new and more powerful position. Levi then realizes that Mordo has made a business of sex work. He controls a group of women, leveraging their sex work for a profit. Levi declines the offer, realizing that Mordo has embraced a kind of post-war amorality. In Mordo’s world, morality is irrelevant. After being freed from the camps, Mordo has made this work his only form of existence. He is trapped in a prison of his own ideology, compelled to enrich himself at the expense of others.