Primo Levi
Primo Levi's memoir of his 10 months in Auschwitz is a masterpiece of Holocaust literature--not simply a recounting of personal tragedies and historical atrocities, but a remarkably clear-eyed and rigorous meditation on the fragile nature of human personality and identity in the face of systematic oppression. A 25-year-old chemist when he was arrested in his native Turin by the Italian fascists and deported to Poland's most notorious rail terminus, Levi used his observational skills and considerable literary gifts to paint a detailed portrait of the death camp. Yet, throughout this 1961 book, he scrupulously reminds the reader that no amount of writerly eloquence will ever do justice to the experience of those who suffered there.(This review was written under the original title of the book: If This is a Man followed by The Truce)Reading this book filled me with sorrow and horror. I was prepared for the horror but did not expect the crawling sadness of this impassive tale of improbable survival, of days and months of fear, hunger and torment that I devoured in astonishment but digested
I was amazed at the feats that these people had to manage, stunned by the inhumane brutality of the SS soldiers and other prisoner trustees, and deeply moved by Levis account of his brief stay and the closest thing to hell on earth ever to exist. It is important to at least respect what they went through during this most troubling time, and to learn from the mistakes of the past. Others, like Levi, maitained the belief in his humanity as well as in that of every other man. The things that Levi feared, witnessed, and was subjected to were some of the saddest, most disturbing things Ive ever heard. For every victim of insane hatred and violence and for humanitys sake. click here to learn more about this bookLevi's haunting memoir about his ten months in the German death camp Auschwitz is an unforgettable chronicle of systematic cruelty and miraculous survival. If This Is a Man made me realize once and for all that it is extemely important that we know, that we relate to what happened. It is said that those survivors who chose not to talk were those who could not reconcile the shame and misery of the camp experience with their condition as human beings. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity 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. Reading Levis tale of survival and lengthy repatriation, we come to understand the need for telling this extraordinaty experience. 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. This book is the most graphic and amazing account of life in a nazi death camp that Ive ever come across. That there were millions of human beings that went through such systematic torture and annihilation and that this whole torment was inflicted by man. I recommend this book to absolutely anyone. Fot this, he claims, the extermination camp experience touches us all.
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