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Survival In Auschwitz (Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global) Paperback – September 1, 1996
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In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi’s classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remains a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit. Included in this new edition is an illuminating conversation between Philip Roth and Primo Levi never before published in book form.
- Print length187 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 1996
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-109780684826806
- ISBN-13978-0684826806
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David Caute, New Statesman Survival in Auschwitz is a stark prose poem on the deepest sufferings of man told without self-pity, but with a muted passion and intensity, an occasional cry of anguish, which makes it one of the most remarkable documents I have ever read.
Meredith Tax, The Village Voice More than anything else I've read or seen, Levi's books helped me not only to grasp the reality of genocide but to figure out what it means for people like me who grew up sheltered from the storm.
The Times Literary Supplement (London) Survival in Auschwitz has the inevitability of the true work of art.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Journey
I was captured by the Fascist Militia on 13 December 1943. I was twenty-four, with little wisdom, no experience and a decided tendency -- encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me for the previous four years by the racial laws -- to live in an unrealistic world of my own, a world inhabited by civilized Cartesian phantoms, by sincere male and bloodless female friendships. I cultivated a moderate and abstract sense of rebellion.
It had been by no means easy to flee into the mountains and to help set up what, both in my opinion and in that of friends little more experienced than myself, should have become a partisan band affiliated with the Resistance movement Justice and Liberty. Contacts, arms, money and the experience needed to acquire them were all missing. We lacked capable men, and instead we were swamped by a deluge of outcasts, in good or bad faith, who came from the plain in search of a non-existent military or political organization, of arms, or merely of protection, a hiding place, a fire, a pair of shoes.
At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly. So that I can only consider the following sequence of events justified. Three Fascist Militia companies, which had set out in the night to surprise a much more powerful and dangerous band than ours, broke into our refuge one spectral snowy dawn and took me down to the valley as a suspect person.
During the interrogations that followed, I preferred to admit my status of 'Italian citizen of Jewish race'. I felt that otherwise I would be unable to justify my presence in places too secluded even for an evacuee; while I believed (wrongly as was subsequently seen) that the admission of my political activity would have meant torture and certain death. As a Jew, I was sent to Fossoli, near Modena, where a vast detention camp, originally meant for English and American prisoners-of-war, collected all the numerous categories of people not approved of by the new-born Fascist Republic.
At the moment of my arrival, that is, at the end of January 1944, there were about one hundred and fifty Italian Jews in the camp, but within a few weeks their number rose to over six hundred. For the most part they consisted of entire families captured by the Fascists or Nazis through their imprudence or following secret accusations. A few had given themselves up spontaneously, reduced to desperation by the vagabond life, or because they lacked the means to survive, or to avoid separation from a captured relation, or even -- absurdly -- 'to be in conformity with the law'. There were also about a hundred Jugoslavian military internees and a few other foreigners who were politically suspect.
The arrival of a squad of German SS men should have made even the optimists doubtful; but we still managed to interpret the novelty in various ways without drawing the most obvious conclusions. Thus, despite everything, the announcement of the deportation caught us all unawares.
On 20 February, the Germans had inspected the camp with care and had publicly and loudly upbraided the Italian commissar for the defective organization of the kitchen service and for the scarce amount of wood distribution for heating; they even said that an infirmary would soon be opened. But on the morning of the 21st we learned that on the following day the Jews would be leaving. All the Jews, without exception. Even the children, even the old, even the ill. Our destination? Nobody knew. We should be prepared for a fortnight of travel. For every person missing at the roll-call, ten would be shot.
Only a minority of ingenuous and deluded souls continued to hope; we others had often spoken with the Polish and Croat refugees and we knew what departure meant.
For people condemned to death, tradition prescribes an austere ceremony, calculated to emphasize that all passions and anger have died down, and that the act of justice represents only a sad duty towards society which moves even the executioner to pity for the victim. Thus the condemned man is shielded from all external cares, he is granted solitude and, should he want it, spiritual comfort; in short, care is taken that he should feel around him neither hatred nor arbitrariness, only necessity and justice, and by means of punishment, pardon.
But to us this was not granted, for we were many and time was short. And in any case, what had we to repent, for what crime did we need pardon? The Italian commissar accordingly decreed that all services should continue to function until the final notice: the kitchens remained open, the corvées for cleaning worked as usual, and even the teachers of the little school gave lessons until the evening, as on other days. But that evening the children were given no homework.
And night came, and it was such a night that one knew that human eyes would not witness it and survive. Everyone felt this: not one of the guards, neither Italian nor German, had the courage to come and see what men do when they know they have to die.
All took leave from life in the manner which most suited them. Some praying, some deliberately drunk, others lustfully intoxicated for the last time. But the mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed the luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?
In hut 6A old Gattegno lived with his wife and numerous children and grandchildren and his sons- and daughters-in-law. All the men were carpenters, they had come from Tripoli after many long journeys, and had always carried with them the tools of their trade, their kitchen utensils and their accordions and violins to play and dance to after the day's work. They were happy and pious folk. Their women were the first to silently and rapidly finish the preparations for the journey in order to have time for mourning. When all was ready, the food cooked, the bundles tied together, they unloosened their hair, took off their shoes, placed the Yahrzeit candles on the ground and lit them according to the customs of their fathers, and sat on the bare soil in a circle for the lamentations, praying and weeping all the night. We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed every century.
Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction. The different emotions that overcame us, of resignation, of futile rebellion, of religious abandon, of fear, of despair, now joined together after a sleepless night in a collective, uncontrolled panic. The time for meditation, the time for decision was over, and all reason dissolved into a tumult, across which flashed the happy memories of our homes, still so near in time and space, as painful as the thrusts of a sword.
Many things were then said and done among us; but of these it is better that there remain no memory.
With the absurd precision to which we later had to accustom ourselves, the Germans held the roll-call. At the end the officer asked 'Wieviel Stück?' The corporal saluted smartly and replied that there were six hundred and fifty 'pieces' and that all was in order. They then loaded us on to the buses and took us to the station of Carpi. Here the train was waiting for us, with our escort for the journey. Here we received the first blows: and it was so new and senseless that we felt no pain, neither in body nor in spirit. Only a profound amazement: how can one hit a man without anger?
There were twelve goods wagons for six hundred and fifty men; in mine we were only forty-five, but it was a small wagon. Here then, before our very eyes, under our very feet, was one of those notorious transport trains, those which never return, and of which, shuddering and always a little incredulous, we had so often heard speak. Exactly like this, detail for detail: goods wagons closed from the outside, with men, women and children pressed together without pity, like cheap merchandise, for a journey towards nothingness, a journey down there, towards the bottom. This time it is us who are inside.
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.
It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the void of bottomless despair, both during the journey and after. It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation; for few are the men capable of such resolution, and we were but a common sample of humanity.
The doors had been closed at once, but the train did not move until evening. We had learnt of our destination with relief. Auschwitz: a name without significance for us at that time, but it at least implied some place on this earth.
The train travelled slowly, with long, unnerving halts. Through the slit we saw the tall pale cliffs of the Adige Valley and the names of the last Italian cities disappear behind us. We passed the Brenner at midday of the second day and everyone stood up, but no one said a word. The thought of the return journey stuck in my heart, and I cruelly pictured to myself the inhuman joy of that other journey, with doors open, no one wanting to flee, and the first Italian names...and I looked around and wondered how many, among that poor human dust, would be struck by fate. Among the forty-five people in my wagon only four saw their homes again; and it was by far the most fortunate wagon.
We suffered from thirst and cold; at every stop we clamoured for water, or even a handful of snow, but we were rarely heard; the soldiers of the escort drove off anybody who tried to approach the convoy. Two young mothers, nursing their children, groaned night and day, begging for water. Our state of nervous tension made the hunger, exhaustion and lack of sleep seem less of a torment. But the hours of darkness were nightmares without end.
There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect. Few know how to remain silent and respect the silence of others. Our restless sleep was often interrupted by noisy and futile disputes, by curses, by kicks and blows blindly delivered to ward off some encroaching and inevitable contact. Then someone would light a candle, and its mournful flicker would reveal an obscure agitation, a human mass, extended across the floor, confused and continuous, sluggish and aching, rising here and there in sudden convulsions and immediately collapsing again in exhaustion.
Through the slit, known and unknown names of Austrian cities, Salzburg, Vienna, then Czech, finally Polish names. On the evening of the fourth day the cold became intense: the train ran through interminable black pine forests, climbing perceptibly. The snow was high. It must have been a branch line as the stations were small and almost deserted. During the halts, no one tried any more to communicate with the outside world: we felt ourselves by now 'on the other side'. There was a long halt in open country. The train started up with extreme slowness, and the convoy stopped for the last time, in the dead of night, in the middle of a dark silent plain.
On both sides of the track rows of red and white lights appeared as far as the eye could see; but there was none of that confusion of sounds which betrays inhabited places even from a distance. By the wretched light of the last candle, with the rhythm of the wheels, with every human sound now silenced, we awaited what was to happen.
Next to me, crushed against me for the whole journey, there had been a woman. We had known each other for many years, and the misfortune had struck us together, but we knew little of each other. Now, in the hour of decision, we said to each other things that are never said among the living. We said farewell and it was short; everybody said farewell to life through his neighbour. We had no more fear.
The climax came suddenly. The door opened with a crash, and the dark echoed with outlandish orders in that curt, barbaric barking of Germans in command which seems to give vent to a millennial anger. A vast platform appeared before us, lit up by reflectors. A little beyond it, a row of lorries. Then everything was silent again. Someone translated: we had to climb down with our luggage and deposit it alongside the train. In a moment the platform was swarming with shadows. But we were afraid to break that silence: everyone busied himself with his luggage, searched for someone else, oiled to somebody, but timidly, in a whisper.
A dozen SS men stood around, legs akimbo, with an indifferent air. At a certain moment they moved among us, and in a subdued tone of voice, with faces of stone, began to interrogate us rapidly, one by one, in bad Italian. They did not interrogate everybody, only a few: 'How old? Healthy or ill?' And on the basis of the reply they pointed in two different directions.
Everything was as silent as an aquarium, or as in certain dream sequences. We had expected something more apocalyptic: they seemed simple police agents. It was disconcerting and disarming. Someone dared to ask for his luggage: they replied, 'luggage afterwards'. Someone else did not want to leave his wife: they said, 'together again afterwards'. Many mothers did not want to be separated from their children: they said 'good, good, stay with child'. They behaved with the calm assurance of people doing their normal duty of every day. But Renzo stayed an instant too long to say good-bye to Francesca, his fiancée, and with a single blow they knocked him to the ground. It was their everyday duty.
In less than ten minutes all the fit men had been collected together in a group. What happened to the others, to the women, to the children, to the old men, we could establish neither then nor later: the night swallowed them up, purely and simply. Today, however, we know that in that rapid and summary choice each one of us had been judged capable or not of working usefully for the Reich; we know that of our convoy no more than ninety-six men and twenty-nine women entered the respective camps of Monowitz-Buna and Birkenau, and that of all the others, more than five hundred in number, not one was living two days later. We also know that not even this tenuous priciple of discrimination between fit and unfit was always followed, and that later the simpler method was often adopted of merely opening both the doors of the wagon without warning or instructions to the new arrivals. Those who by chance climbed down on one side of the convoy entered the camp; the others went to the gas chamber.
This is the reason why three-year-old Emilia died: the historical necessity of killing the children of Jews was self-demonstrative to the Germans. Emilia, daughter of Aldo Levi of Milan, was a curious, ambitious, cheerful, intelligent child; her parents had succeeded in washing her during the journey in the packed car in a tub with tepid water which the degenerate German engineer had allowed them to draw from the engine that was dragging us all to death.
Thus, in an instant, our women, our parents, our children disappeared. We saw them for a short while as an obscure mass at the other end of the platform; then we saw nothing more.
Instead, two groups of strange individuals emerged into the light of the lamps. They walked in squads, in rows of three, with an odd, embarrassed step, head dangling in front, arms rigid. On their heads they wore comic berets and were all dressed in long striped overcoats, which even by night and from a distance looked filthy and in rags. They walked in a large circle around us, never drawing near, and in silence began to busy themselves with our luggage and to climb in and out of the empty wagons.
We looked at each other without a word. It was all incomprehensible and mad, but one thing we had understood. This was the metamorphosis that awaited us. Tomorrow we would be like them.
Without knowing how I found myself loaded on to a lorry with thirty others; the lorry sped into the night at full speed. It was covered and we could not see outside, but by the shaking we could tell that the road had many curves and bumps. Are we unguarded? Throw ourselves down? It is too late, too late, we are all 'down'. In any case we are soon aware that we are not without guard. He is a strange guard, a German soldier bristling with arms. We do not see him because of the thick darkness, but we feel the hard contact every time that a lurch of the lorry throws us all in a heap. At a certain point he switches on a pocket torch and instead of shouting threats of damnation at us, he asks us courteously, one by one, in German and in pidgin language, if we have any money or watches to give him, seeing that they will not be useful to us any more. This is no order, no regulation: it is obvious that it is a small private initiative of our Charon. The matter stirs us to anger and laughter and brings relief.
"A Conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth" copyright © 1986 Philip Roth
Product details
- ASIN : 0684826801
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (September 1, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 187 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780684826806
- ISBN-13 : 978-0684826806
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #15,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #29 in Jewish Holocaust History
- #38 in Author Biographies
- #74 in World War II History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, novels, collections of short stories, essays, and poems. His best-known works include If This Is a Man (1947) (U.S.: Survival in Auschwitz), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and his unique work, The Periodic Table (1975), linked to qualities of the elements, which the Royal Institution of Great Britain named the best science book ever written.
Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. While his death was officially ruled a suicide, some evidence supports the possibility that the fall was accidental.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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Customers find the book readable and insightful. They describe the writing as eloquent, well-crafted, and honest. Readers appreciate the author's insights and perceptions into the psychological and physical destruction of humans. They find the survival story gripping and riveting. The history is described as accurate and important for holocaust libraries. The account is described as authentic, truthful, and direct.
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Customers find the book easy to read and engaging. They describe it as a must-read in Holocaust survival literature, providing an intimate look into the camps. The account provides an incredible view into the nightmarish reality of the camps.
"...: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder, an outstanding book about the intentional mass murder of over 14 million people between 1930..." Read more
"...This book was the most disturbing and intimate look inside the camps I have ever read...." Read more
"...Primo Levi With a poet’s skill for detail and evocative illustration, Primo Levi describes what happens to men when their humanity is..." Read more
"This is a wonderful book but I think people considering ordering this edition should know that it is substandard and possibly pirated...." Read more
Customers appreciate the writing quality of the book. They find it eloquent, well-written, and gives a real understanding of the Holocaust. The author's story is told beautifully in clear, calm language. It describes details of the camp without any pretense of completeness.
"...Primo Levi writes eloquently - though he has every right to douse himself in self-pity, Levi articulates his year-long experience in Auschwitz with..." Read more
"...Nor does he wish to level fresh accusations against the Nazis. Written in a calm, observational tone, Survival in Auschwitz sets out “to furnish..." Read more
"...He features the daily life of the prisoners, the cruelty of the rules, and the process of mental and physical annihilation of the deportees." Read more
"...His writing is a bit dry, perhaps also reflecting on his education as a chemist..." Read more
Customers find the book insightful and interesting. It provides a glimpse into the psychological and physical damage humans experience. The author explores the nature of humanity and provides a forum for understanding. Readers appreciate the philosophical questions and speculations, as well as Levi's thoughts and personal victories. Overall, the book allows readers to revisit and examine the greatness and misery of human existence.
"...As as man somewhat classically educated, he has a keen eye for the human condition of himself, his fellow prisoners, and his guards...." Read more
"...It was unnerving. He presents his experiences, thoughts, and actions unapologetically. His story breaches ethics and morality...." Read more
"...in Auschwitz with detailed observations, acute emotions, and kernels of universal truth that readers can relate to even now, seventy years after the..." Read more
"...memoirs, books and interviews, Primo Levi left behind an invaluable intellectual legacy that helps us recall, commemorate, and understand better the..." Read more
Customers find the story gripping and riveting. They describe it as a true account of life in a concentration camp. The book provides perspective on the human condition and the will to survive horrible atrocities. Readers mention the book provides great perspective on personal victories and defeats during his survival.
"...His story breaches ethics and morality. It flies in the face of religion and established beliefs about good and evil. It frightened me...." Read more
"...His story objectively sincere allows us to relive and examine the greatness and misery of human existence...." Read more
"...a perfect and unbiased recollection what he experienced and skips the melodrama...." Read more
"...The camp was designed to grind all self-respect, all morality, all honor and all love out of its inmates...." Read more
Customers find the book an important history about the holocaust. They say it's a must-read for Holocaust scholars and a life-changing read for anyone. The book reveals the inner workings of Auschwitz in all its gritty details.
"...No doubt this is one of the most important Holocaust books ever written." Read more
"...As well as the inner workings of how the Jews and other prisoners interacted with each other...." Read more
"Great history of a person in the Auschwitz concentration camp...." Read more
"...the meaning of what Levi was saying, but still an important memory of a terrible time in history." Read more
Customers find the book's account authentic and compelling. They describe it as a first-hand, truthful, and direct account of the Holocaust. The autobiographical content provides an unbiased recollection of daily life in the camps.
"Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz has a high autobiographical component: reflections from his experience in the concentration camp and the..." Read more
"...It is truthful, direct, and powerful. What strikes me about this book, is how different it is from other forms of holocaust literature...." Read more
"...It's very stark, but very real." Read more
"...Told very matter-of-factly with no "fluff". A must-read in Holocaust survival lit...." Read more
Customers have different views on the emotional content. Some find it heartbreaking, disturbing, and raw with no softening of the horror. Others describe it as depressing and grotesque.
"I have read numerous Holocaust biographies. This book was the most disturbing and intimate look inside the camps I have ever read...." Read more
"...There are some graphic and emotionally disturbing scenes - this is not a lighthearted subject, but it is compelling, heart-wrenching, insightful,..." Read more
"...his year-long experience in Auschwitz with detailed observations, acute emotions, and kernels of universal truth that readers can relate to even now..." Read more
"...Not once does it mention nazis or Hitler. It is not a sad book but it is depressing." Read more
Customers have varying views on the pacing of the book. Some find it moving and thought-provoking, while others find it dull and overly wordy. The description of one man's terrible experiences as a Jewish person is described realistically. However, some readers feel the story lacks flow and meaning, making it uninteresting and dull.
"...aplomb that few have, Levi is able to give a rather full and moving description of his personal experience in Auschwitz and its surrounding camps...." Read more
"...are some graphic and emotionally disturbing scenes - this is not a lighthearted subject, but it is compelling, heart-wrenching, insightful, and..." Read more
"...This book will move you, and give you new insight into how horrible the holocaust really was. Truly an outstanding work...." Read more
"Realistic, moving description of one man’s terrible experiences as a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz...." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2011I'm a history buff, and my favorite time period is the World War II era ... both because it occurred recently enough that I can still talk to survivors of the conflict and because of all the changes in the world that happened in just a six year period. But as I've read or own many, if not most, of the worthwhile books about the fighting, I've recently begun reading and learning about what was happening away from the fighting. After reading "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder, an outstanding book about the intentional mass murder of over 14 million people between 1930 and 1947, I decided to learn more about the Holocast and related topics. (Many of the books I've read did touch on the Holocast and the murders of other nationalities and ethnicities, but I've only read a bare handful of books dealing specifically about these sad events.) My buying this book is a result of my desire to learn more.
"Survival in Auschwitz", by Primo Levi, is an excellent account of Mr Levi's year in Auschwitz. It begins with his train transport to Auschwitz and the separation of the train's passengers into categories of what turned out to be "workers" and "those to be immediately killed", and his subsequent transport into one of the labor subcamps. The book then covers his life and severe struggles for survival in the camp until his eventual liberation by the Soviets.
While the book is arranged chronologically, it isn't a straightforward diary of events. The author, as he notes in his introduction, organizes the book into themes and things he feels most strongly about, while the timeline still flows chronolgically. Mr Levi was educated as a chemist, and after the war he worked in and later managed a paint plant until his retirement. As as man somewhat classically educated, he has a keen eye for the human condition of himself, his fellow prisoners, and his guards. His writing is a bit dry, perhaps also reflecting on his education as a chemist (although some of it could be the translation from Italian to English).
Mr Levi wrote the book in a matter-of-fact manner about his time as a prisoner. At first, I was relieved that I wouldn't have to read too many more heartrending anecdotes as contained in other, similar books I've read. (I know that such anecdotes are necessary to be read so as to better remember the actions and inhumanity that had occurred, but they're still very hard for me to read.) But then, as the author matter-of-factly descibed the casual brutality, the simple choices that meant the difference between continued life or a trip to the gas chambers, and the things the prisoners had to do (even to other prisoners) just to survive, I began to feel that his non-emotional telling of his story might be even more frightening and unsettling than the other books were.
The author states that it was basically a string of good luck and chance that he survived the camp, while most of the others perished. He possibly had a life-long guilt about his survival and likely suffered from long-term depression, as he may have committed suicide in 1987 (the coroner and three later biographers believed so, but others disgreed.) But this and other books he wrote about this time in his life, both factual and fiction, clearly give you a view into what it was like inside a concentration camp was, when death was but a short tap on the shoulder away. Highly recommended.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2024I have read numerous Holocaust biographies. This book was the most disturbing and intimate look inside the camps I have ever read. Unlike other books in the genre, Primo made me feel like I was a prisoner in the camp with him. It was unnerving. He presents his experiences, thoughts, and actions unapologetically. His story breaches ethics and morality. It flies in the face of religion and established beliefs about good and evil. It frightened me. It left me feeling deflated and defeated. Which I think is the point.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2015"For human nature is such that grief and pain - even simultaneously suffered - do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving in the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life one hears it said that man is never content." (Page 73)
Primo Levi writes eloquently - though he has every right to douse himself in self-pity, Levi articulates his year-long experience in Auschwitz with detailed observations, acute emotions, and kernels of universal truth that readers can relate to even now, seventy years after the end of WWII.
The writing style reads a bit dense at times, though whether Levi wrote it that way or it's due to the translation process I don't know. That being said, it isn't impossible to read - it forces readers to take his words in slowly, perhaps reread a sentence or two, and that may be where the power of his words stems from. No doubt this is one of the most important Holocaust books ever written.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2017Survival in Auschwitz
Primo Levi
With a poet’s skill for detail and evocative illustration, Primo Levi describes what happens to men when their humanity is systematically denied them. Published in Italy in 1958, as If This is a Man, the English title Survival in Auschwitz was a publisher’s decision. The original title maintains the more suggestive issue behind the book. Title aside, Levi’s book is perhaps the best book written about the existential experience of living in Auschwitz. It is also as clear a statement possible about how fragile is our humanity, and how easily ideological driven differences within a society can transform common citizens into sadists.
Levi understood the camps to be a science experiment designed to eliminate the niceties that gird and enable individual and collective human co-existence. Hence, when the Jews arrived at the camps the Germans separated the fathers, the mothers, and their children from each other. They took away their clothes, cut off their hair, replaced their names with a number, and talked about them as if they were objects (stück). A couple hours after arriving in Auschwitz, all which remained of their humanity was their bodies. Their bodies would soon all look and smell like the living skeletons we associate with the concentration camps.
Almost everyone who was not immediately killed was to put to this test: You are unconditionally alone. You will receive a minimum amount of food, the clothes we supply you are not meant to keep you warm, your shoes will rub your feet raw and the sores will get infected, you will get up at dawn and work throughout the day, and every day will be the same until we decide you must go to the chimneys.
Moreover, no human kindness will be shown you. We do not consider you a human being. You will quickly learn to trust no one. Leave your spoon or bowl unguarded for a second and it will disappear. Sharing and caring for anyone but your self is a fool’s project; “eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.” For the Jews, Auschwitz was not a punishment but a manner of living assigned to them by the SS. Life was reduced to “primordial mechanism.”
The consequences of this treatment and how it plays out are superbly recounted by Levi. He writes that few prisoners consciously resigned themselves to their fate. Rather, they sank into the “opaque torpor of beasts broken in by blows, whom the blows no longer hurt.” They had lost their selves, become hollow, reduced to suffering and needs, fraternized in a uniform of internal desolation.
Those who followed the rules were usually dead within three months. Only men with one of three qualities survived: 1) Those that they were physically powerful, 2) those who were ruthless and brutal, and 3) those that had a skill the Germans needed. In such a condition Levi asks if there any meaning to ‘good’ or ‘evil’, ‘just’ and ‘unjust’? Certainly our moral world could not survive. If that goes, so goes our humanity.
Levi survived. He was lucky. At the beginning of his second winter in the camp the Germans opened a lab and needed Chemists. He was one and proved it. Inside the chemistry lab Levi had two things going for him. He was insulated from the winter, and he could steal equipment from the lab and sell it for food. Nonetheless, he had got to the point, as he said, where “I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.” He had been brought to the bottom, made hollow. Born 31 July 1919, Levi died 11 April 1987.
This is a great book. Read it.
Top reviews from other countries
- I have already purchased this book from Amazon a few years back that's the reason I want to retirn it.Reviewed in India on July 21, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars To return this book.
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- yeltrab, JanetReviewed in Germany on January 10, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Book by Levi
It just arrived yesterday, so not enough time to have read it. Arrived quickly and in perfect condition
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BEATRIZ ZARAIN RODRIGUEZReviewed in Mexico on October 17, 2017
5.0 out of 5 stars Primo Levi, my favorite.
Thanks for this wonderful book. The presentations is great. I enjoyed the size of letter and I finished loving again my dear Primo Levi. A wonderful narrator because he writes with his soul and a huge human being.
- PatriciaMargueriteReviewed in Canada on February 4, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended and amazing treatment of difficult lives
One of the most outstanding books I have read. The author writes his experiences leading up to and including his time at Auschwitz. Yes, he stated the facts, but he also created fine character sketches of those who were around him. The book showed his insightful awareness and beautifully narrated analysis of the reactions of others and of himself. He used many words which I was not aware of but now are part of my repertoire (handy to have the smart phone nearby and look up those words). This was not burdensome for me because he didn't use the words to impress but rather to express his thoughts precisely.
- ElinaReviewed in Italy on February 11, 2016
3.0 out of 5 stars A good book on the subject
Well, when I first heard of the Levi book and the praise about it, I immediately wanted to buy one. That's done, I waited when my little kid would allow me some time to read it. And finally I have done it. I am glad I read it. However, I had an impression from the other praises I have heard, that this book should be marvellous. As it really is good and has given me some new insights of the life in lagers, I expected it to be more inspiring. Instead it was a good and honest story of the heartbreaking everyday life in a concentration camp. What limits me to give the book more stars is that some chapters seemed to me odd and repetitous. And the fact that on the subject of sufferings from a totalitarian regime I have read some other books whom I'd give five stars, as for example "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or "With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows" by Sandra Kalniete. Said that, I would still highly recommend this book as it is a must read on the Nazi concentration camps.