Book Review: Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz

By: Brian Freeman

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 1995. p.192

In the History of the world there have been few incidences of atrocities that equal to the treatment of the Jews in Europe during World War II. The Holocaust is one of the most important and horrific incidences in the history of mankind. Sixty years later we still ask how and why? We try to find some understanding but it is difficult for us to accept the levels of systematic cruelty and terror experienced by Jews during this period. There are many great authors of Holocaust Literature that give understanding or a glimpse into that world. We have been blessed with great works of literature by Elie Wiesel with his trilogy of books Night, Dawn, and Day. The Diary of Anne Frank and the poetry of Nelly Sachs help paint pictures of understanding. All these authors and their works are great in their own ways. However, there is one author who stands out. Primo Levi and his memoir, Survival in Auschwitz, is a true masterpiece of Holocaust literature. It is not simply a recounting of personal tragedies and historical atrocities, but a clear-eyed and highly detailed story of the fragile nature of human personality.

Primo Levi’s story begins July 31, 1919 when he was born to a Jewish middle class family in Turin, Italy. His family had long been assimilated into Italian life. Levy never discovered his Jewish ness until he came up against the racial laws enacted in 1938 by Mussolini Fascist Regime. Levi continued with life and graduated first in his class as a chemist from the University of Turin in 1941. Active in the resistance against the Fascist cause, Levi was captured in northern Italy. He was imprisoned in an Italian transit camp, from which he transferred to Auschwitz. One of the most compelling chapters in Survival in Auschwitz is The Journey. The Journey describes his arrest, transportation, and arrival to Auschwitz. Primo with 650 others was loaded into a freight train for a four day journey without food or water. Primo says,” 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.” The German SS Soldiers separated those they deemed capable of work from those they deemed incapable, such as women, children and elderly. Only 135 of the 650 from Levi’s train were admitted into Auschwitz, the other 515 went immediately to the gas chambers.

He was herded with the others into the camp and after being stripped naked and having his head shaved. He was given an old striped uniform and the identification numbers 174517 were tattooed on his arm. Levi describes his experience as “Becoming a mindless slave one would soon forget the point of life itself almost not caring whether you live or whether you die is the most inhuman trait imaginable.” Levi uses this kind of depiction as a prisoner with almost unemotional tone that often disguises the horror of what he is describing. As a prisoner of Auschwitz he was forced to work seven days a week with two Sundays off a month which were filled with tedious, exhausting tasks and were often the only opportunity available to attend to personal hygiene needs. The bulk of their time was spent working sixteen hour days in factories and around the camp and making supplies for the war and other items for the Germans. With little food and inadequate clothing, it was easy to fall ill or die from exhaustion while working in the snow and rain. Levi was lucky enough to be sent to the Ka-be or the infirmary to recover from an injury to his Achilles tendon. The Ka-be was overcrowded, and it was populated by individuals with deadly, communicable diseases such as typhus and dysentery. There were no medicines available to relieve the symptoms or the pain and suffering was widespread. Despite the pain and suffering, he was able to rest and build up some strength before returning back to work. Much of the work assigned to them was needless. If not for his degree in chemistry, which earned him a place in the Chemistry Command working indoors during the last winter, Primo would have probably suffered the same fate as about eleven million other people did. Of the eleven million, six million of them were Jews who died during the war.

Primo Levi’s life and writings are marked by his wartime experience and by the guilt of having survived when so many others perished in the German Concentration Camps. In 1987 Primo could no longer withstand the guilt and committed suicide. Levi's haunting memoir about his ten months in the German death camp Auschwitz is an unforgettable chronicle of systematic cruelty and miraculous survival. When reading Levi’s tale of survival and lengthy repatriation, we come to understand the need for telling this extraordinary experience.

Jeannette BaxterAuthor’s, “Primo Levi (1919-1987)” October 12,2007.http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2709.

David Damrosch and David L. Pike, The Longman Anthology World Literature Compact, Compact ed.,(Pearson Education, Inc., 2008), 2680-2691.