Survival in Auschwitz (1947)

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Primo Levi was a young Jewish man living in Turin, Italy when he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Due to a combination of luck and calculation, he survived.

I truly, truly hate to give any Holocaust memoir less than five stars. They are all important and they should all be read.

That said.

Somehow I never got drawn into this book. It took me two weeks to read a book that is 190 pages long. Crazy, right? I can't put my finger on what my problem was. Bear with me as I try to work it out.

Maybe it's that I'm more of the "feeling" personality type and Levi seems to be more of a "thinker." He does have some very astute observations to make about humanity. I started to lose interest in a chapter titled "The Drowned and the Saved." This chapter was almost like a primer for how to survive in such horrific conditions. I have concluded that I wouldn't make it. I don't understand anything that resembles economics. So descriptions of schemes to trade 1 piece of bread for a coupon that somehow turns into 4 pieces of bread left me scratching my head. I don't get it. My eyes glazed over.

I did finally get more interested in the very last chapter, "The Story of Ten Days." This felt more personal to me. Levi and some fellow prisoners are trying to survive in the abandoned camp until the Russian army arrives. They immediately lose the "survival at all costs" mentality and start to look out for each other again.

In looking back through this book for my review, I see a lot of passages that seem pertinent and that provide a lot of food for thought. Maybe this was just a bad time for me to read this particular book? I don't know.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that most of this memoir was a little too analytical and distanced. When it got more personal, I tuned in, but then it was finished.

Again, I still recommend this and all other Holocaust memoirs. I personally just didn't click with the style of this one. ( )

Okay, okay, if I read one more Holocaust book, this should be it.

No horror da Lager, Primo Levi encontra a humilhação, o cansaço, a fome, os prisioneiros que roubam uns dos outros, que se desumanizam, e também um operário que se arrisca para lhe dar sopa, amigos, crianças, pessoas que admira e que o espantam, pessoas que morrem de doenças banais. Levi não é ingênuo, vê tudo que lhe aconteceu e pergunta É Isso um Homem? Que não conhece paz, que luta por meio pão, que morre por um sim e por um não? E amaldiçoa as pessoas que não repetirem a história aos filhos.
Ele disse que depois recebeu cartas de pessoas que diziam não ter repetido a história aos filhos porque era pesada para crianças, como se as crianças não fossem as que mais precisavam saber de tudo aquilo.
Mais do que contar a sua história, que não se esquecer que era uma pessoa, não um número, um trecho mostra Levi resistindo a desumanização da Lager: o Canto de Ulisses, recitado a um homem que não falava italiano, mal traduzido para o alemão por um homem com fome, com tentativas de explicação que foram provavelmente completamente ineficazes. Isso é lindo. Mostra a arte como algo capaz de afirmar a humanidade de um homem submetido a terríveis provações por meio de um texto de seiscentos anos. ( )

This was an interesting book to read because of the fact that this is a factual account of one Holocaust survivors account of living in a concentration camp. For the majority of the book it was hard to read what Levi had to say was his reality because it was so harsh, but that was the reality of this existence. The most interesting part of the book for me was when he started mentioning several people that were in the camp with him. It was adding these people that were there with him that added the needed depth that was lacking at the very beginning of the book. He was able to draw us into his experience through the people that he interacted with. Also what the camp was really like for him.

If it wasn't for books like this we may one day forget the Holocaust entirely and I am glad the he wrote this account before his passing because it would be horrible to forget this event. By remembering it we go a long way towards preventing it from ever happening again. I hope the other books that I have to read for this Holocaust course have as much depth as this single book has in just a few short pages. ( )