Reading 1001 discussion

Rating: 5 stars


This is one of the best-written memoirs by a Holocaust survivor that I have read. He, like all the prisoners, was stripped of all his humanity. He did what he needed to do to survive. In the end, he begins to regain some of the humanity he lost.

Knowing beforehand how he ultimately died over 40 years later, I found the following passage foreboding, "to fall ill of diphtheria in those conditions was more surely fatal than jumping off a fourth floor."

Overall, a difficult book in terms of content, but definitely an important one that everyone should read.

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
5/5
Primo Levi, 'Italian citizen of Jewish race' a holocaust survivor. This is his story.

“It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944, that is, after the German Government had decided, owing to the growing scarcity of labour, to lengthen the average lifespan of the prisoners destined for elimination; it conceded noticeable improvements in the camp routine and temporarily suspended killings at the whim of individuals.”

“...goods wagons closed from the outside, with men, women and children pressed together without pity, like cheap merchandise, for a journey towards, nothingness, a journey down there, towards the bottom. This time it is us who are inside.”

“Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man”.

'...Until one day there will be no more sense in say: tomorrow.'

This is the first book in a trilogy written by the author about his survival in a concentration camp, I plan on reading all three. This book a mere 173 pages packs a punch. Like Night by Elie Wiesel, the author eloquently describes his capture, journey, survival and liberation from a concentration death camp. I found the last chapter, The Story of Ten Days, to be particularly impactful. An important story to read and one I would recommend.

Survival in Auschwitz By Primo Levi
5 stars
I have read both fiction and biographical books regarding the Holocaust and the concentration camps but this is by far the most compelling read on this topic.
The book tells the story of Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian chemist, who manages to survive his incarceration in the camps. Unlike other books on the topic, he never attempts to give the larger context of the camps by giving the reader the history or the overall horrors of the whole final solution system or its horrific statistics. Rather, he tells a very detailed and very intimate story of his personal experience in the camps. In this way, the reader learns what he learned and knows what he knows. He barely even mentions any specific German or anything that any one German did because much of the policing and punishment in the camps is done by other prisoners with only slightly higher status than himself. Overtime he goes from being totally confused as a new prisoner to understanding the system just a bit but succumbing to the inhumanity of it all. Although Germany built the camps, Primo Levi's real enemy is exhaustion, hunger, sickness, boredom and shame. He is reduced to knowing that he looks and acts like the men he is surrounded by and he knows that in order to survive he must reduce his compassion. To give away your ration of bread to someone who needs it more is to waste the bread as the recipient will likely die whereas it might give you one more day. The statistics he writes about are those of the people around him....we were 69 and now we are 29.
And yet there are moments of hope:

" I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; not so much for his material aid, as for his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving."

And yet for each day that he lived and other died there is also shame and ultimately this is what makes the book so amazing. Primo Levi manages to share with us the full range of emotions that accompanied him to and away from the camps.
I agree with Diane that the Story of Ten Days is particularly strong.

As other’s have noted. I’ve read both fiction and nonfiction books about the holocaust. I’ve read both Primo Levi’s list books. I think I liked his novel a bit better than the memoir but the memoir was harder and real and the novel was lighter. I liked this memoir that examines humanity. I like the title If this is a man but better and it fits the novel better than Survival in Auschwitz.

The book shows how deep is hope in man that he can’t give up even in the worst conditions. Even when he was certain that he would end up in the selection process he never quit. When examining myself, I shudder to think of what they endured and know it is beyond any human effort that I have in me.

5 stars.

So good reviews, everyone is giving it 5 stars. Seems I need to get this high on my TBR list 😊

As hard to read as expected. Levi does an amazing job of showing the ingenuity of the prisoners/slaves/inmates. As he explains, no matter how bad it got, they nearly all had some sort of hope to keep going. Even when they thought and discussed "if it gets worse, I will..." but they never do. They just kept going, stealing, dealing, accepting beatings as an acceptable risk to get another shirt, or make another spoon, or make a deal with a willing civilian. How much work they could do while starving and, at the end, while ill, is unbelievable to me.

I really want to read the next volume—about his return to Italy as a survivor. To reintegrate into society after such a harrowing experience seems nearly impossible. Yet he did it, successfully.

5 stars

This is such a hard but necessary read. Reading it as the pictures of children sleeping on floors in dog cages after being detained by Americans is devastating. This needs to be read in every school system of the entire world - but especially by Americans right now.

My rating for this book would be 4 stars. I still remember that Fateless - the book of Imre Kertes with similar theme - also made such a strong impression on me, maybe even stronger than this one.
The story was told by a boy of 25 who was taken by Nazis to Auschwitz. It is incredible story, hard and emotional. It is describing terrible destiny of people send to concentration camp and in particular of how one has to fight to survive in the worst possible situation. I guess that the fact of being young made him willing to find a way to survive, which was very rare for many others, faced with death.

Primo Levi’s account of his time in Auschwitz is written with a clarity and precision that reveals all the horror of the events and situation he describes. Levi is set to work at various back breaking physical labours while dealing with extreme hunger, cold and pain from his blistered feet hands. Outside the working day, he spends his time in the camp in Hut 48, where he learns all the tricks of survival - theft, bartering, total self preservation - and sees how the system dehumanises its victims.

This was indeed difficult to read, but gave a really clear picture of how the camps functioned and what life was like there. As others have mentioned, the book ends on a really powerful note as a small group of prisoners face the final days before liberation in the camp where the SS and guards have fled from, leaving desolation, filth and chaos.

I read it in this edition If This Is a Man • The Truce so will be going on to read The Truce, and then complete the trilogy.

What a harrowing and yet inspirational book. It's hard to believe it made no impact when it was published, and only years later when another publisher picked it up did it become well known in Italy and overseas as well.

In describing his year in one of the labour camps that formed part of the Auschwitz complex, Primo Levi never hesitates to describe the terrible alongside the mundane, the inhumanity alongside the humanity. He survived through a mixture of chance, mindfulness, and friendship, not through any mercy shown - there was none.

Pre-2016 review:

**** 1/2

Probably the first literary account to be published about the Holocaust and life in the Nazi concentration camps, Levi guides us, "in a sense of urgency", through all the aspects of his survival journey in Auschwitz. The urgency is expressed by the manner through which Levi provides us his account, sometimes in a certain chronology, sometimes following certain themes, slightly chaotic, just as you would think are the thoughts of somebody caught in this situation. The tone of the narration is a blend of despair, resignation and sense of humour, which makes reading a bit lighter than expected for this subject matter (but not as light as Fatelessness by Kertesz). The chapter about the last ten days in the camp is harrowing and breathtaking. An essential read to understand the extreme brutality and inhumanity of the Nazi regime.