We must never forget.

Especially now as time flows on and memory is getting thinner and thinner... we must remember.

I am not religious and i think that every kind of sense of guilt toward some supernatural being is foolish: but we must feel ashamed and share the regret for that carnage for ever and ever, in order not to let it happen again.

Peace. ( )

Paradoxically, I'd been put off reading this book by Philip Roth's front-cover blurb: 'One of the century's truly necessary books.' 'Necessary' sits awfully close to 'worthy', and 'worthy' sits close to 'dull'. But this book -- really, two books, as this volume includes not only If This Is a Man, Levi's account of his time in Auschwitz (indeed, it was published in the US with the hand-holding title Survival in Auschwitz), but also The Truce (retitled by US publishers with the similarly hamfisted The Reawakening), in which he and more than a thousand other prisoners endure the arduous journey home to Italy -- is anything but dull. It sends sparks of light flying in all directions, and at times it's even funny. It's one of the best and most quotable books I've ever read. Levi writes as a Jew, yes, unambivalently, but also as an Italian, and profoundly as a human being. It's Dante rather than the Torah that sustains him. He insists on the importance of reason. A serious engagement with religion is evident, all the same.
This edition of the book has a kind of FAQ Afterword written in 1979, where he appears to argue against the idea of trying to understand the perpetrators:

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand is almost to justify. Let me explain: 'understanding' a proposal or human behaviour means to 'contain' it, contain its author put oneself in his place, identify with him.

That was written before Gitta Sereny produced her extraordinary Albert Speer: His Struggle with Truth, but even she, as far as I know, didn't get anywhere near 'understanding' Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels or Eichmann.

http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/... ( )

http://www.ilpotereelagloria.com/libr... ( )

Definitely one of the hardest books I have ever read in terms of harrowing content, but it remains with me still. ( )

Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist who was taken by the Nazis. He survived the Holocaust to speak and write of his experiences. A man of moral stamina and intellectual poise his books should be read every generation. ( )