Survival in Auschwitz: If This Is a Man is a book written by the Italian author, Primo Levi. It describes his experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War.
Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camps alive. The average life expectancy of a new entrant was three months.
This truly amazing story offers a revealing glimpse into the realities of the Holocaust and its effects on our world.
Survival in Auschwitz is a mostly straightforward narrative, beginning with Primo Levi's deportation from Turin, Italy, to the concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland in 1943. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in the camp. Even Levi's most graphic descriptions of the horrors he witnessed and endured there are marked by a restraint and wit that not only gives readers access to his experience, but confronts them with it in stark ethical and emotional terms: "[A]t 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 something to eat today?" --Michael Joseph Gross
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
primo levi Primo Michele Levi (July 31, 1919 - April 11, 1987) was a Jewish-Italian chemist, Holocaust survivor and author of memoirs, short stories, poems, essays and novels. He is best known for his work on the Holocaust, and in particular his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz, the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Survival in Auschwitz - If This Is a Man has been described as one of the most important works of the twentieth century.
Vivid Portrayal of Horror Primo Levi was an Italian Jew arrested for anti-Fascist resistance in 1944 and sent to the camps of Auschwitz. His short, vivid portrayal of the horrors of the Nazi camps there, the depravity of human nature and the extremes that the human psyche can endure, makes for a lasting literary contribution. Not sermonizing about theology or lecturing about good and evil, this bare-bones account nonetheless has dramatic questions for those interested in human nature, the holocaust, and evil. Very fleetingly does he... more info
"...man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly." Primo Levy, a twenty-four-year-old Italian Jew captured "on 13 December 1943" and imprisoned for ten months, provides a chilling, though often poetic, account of his so called life in a concentration camp, while hitting home the frustration and futility of his situation. The best way to describe his story and style is through his own words: (p 15) as they prepared the night before they were to be deported "Everyone felt this: not one of the guards, neither Italian or German, had the courage to come and see... more info
Direct and Powerful Mr. Levi's ability to recount his experience with such emotional clarity allowed me to take in a piece of this dark chapter in European history that I might not have been able to otherwise, given the immensity of the horror. I look forward to reading the other two books he wrote on Auschwitz. Highly recommended.
Related
Sections
