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and almost got killed. After the war he led the construction works of the Polish Cemetery at Montecassino. Then he moved for a few years in Argentina with his wife and daughter, only to return in Italy with the status of stateless person. He became Italian citizen in 1964 and finally returned to Poland where he was visiting his sister (who took part in the Warsaw Uprising). My grandfather never talked not of war. Neither has ever written of the war. Simply, he would rather try to forget this time. Georges Perec wrote between 1969 and 1975 W, or the memory of childhood. The book is divided into two seemingly unrelated stories; one tells of a society founded on the Olympic ideal in a distant island off the coast of Patagonia, the other hand is a real autobiography. Perec was born in Paris in 1936, his father died in the war in 1940 and her mother was deported to Auschwitz in early 1943. However she managed to save his son, putting him on a train headed to Villard-de-Lans, where he spent the years of the conflict at his father’s relatives home. In the eighth chapter, using old photographs, the French novelist outlines the portraits of his parents. «I have no memories of childhood», he writes and the only way he has to fill that void is through writing. «I write: write because we lived together, because I was one among them, a shadow in the midst of their shadows, a body next to their bodies; I write because they have left an indelible mark, and writing as the only track: writing is the remembrance of their death and the affirmation of my life4 ». The main character in not an actor, but a witness of the narrative. Pictures, memories, voices, silences, the unspeakable have therefore their placement. (to be continued…) 4
G. Perec; W ou le souvenir d’enfance, Denoël, 1975; W, or the memory of childhood, tr. Henri Cinoc, Einaudi, Turin, 2005.
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