If This Is a Man and The Truce

A truly wonderful book by a great author. In this volume you get Levi's If This Is a Man, his story of his trials in one of the satellite camps of Auschwitz, and The Truce, the story of his long journey from Auschwitz back home to Turin. In the "Afterword" included with this edition (Abacus edition of 1987) you also have Levi's answers to the questions his readers had posed to him over the years. These are also revealing. I've read many books about the Holocaust and WWII. I could not put this one down. I picked this up after reading Levi's The Periodic Table (also excellent). Here, Levi bears witness to the horrors of the Lager system of Nazi Germany. He is very specific about bearing witness. This is not a history or a commentary, though he does give his opinions. You can't call this a memoir really: it is testimony. In The Truce, he describes the long, strange journey he took back to Italy, through Poland, Russia, Bjelorus, Ukraine, Rumania, Hungary, Austria, and Germany, in the care of, mostly, the Russians. This is also a fascinating tale and follows on naturally: If This Is a Man ends with the arrival of the Russians to liberate the Auschwitz Lager and you want to know how he gets home and gets on with his life. Levi was a master story teller. You just want to keep reading and hear what will happen next. He was obviously a very intelligent man. These books are very restrained and humane, towards all the people in them, even the evil-doing Germans. Levi states that he does not want revenge and doesn't hate the Germans. His concern was that civilized people everywhere do not allow this to happen again. (We've let him down there: Cambodia, Myanmar, Rwanda, The Balkans, Darfur, ...) I've read numerous books on the Holocaust, and I find some of them just too tough (emotionally) to read (especially after my kids came along), for example The Nazi Doctors. Levi tells you the bad stuff but somehow makes it bearable and a thoroughly wonderful read. When I finished this book, I was very moved by my admiration for the humanity of Levi (not to mention the wonderful writing.) I kept repeating to myself, "that was a real man ..." Too bad we lost him at such a young age.

IF THIS IS A MAN is the British title of what was curiously published in the US as SURVIVING AUSCHWITZ. This edition is divided between Levi’s story of survival in the camp and, in THE TRUCE, his circuitous journey from Auschwitz back to his home in Turin. I’m dividing my review into corresponding halves. IF THIS IS A MAN - With spare but lively prose, Levi recounts his deportation, confinement, and improbable survival within Auschwitz. No matter how dispiriting his situation, Levi never stoops to outright hopelessness. There’s something between the words that glows. He creates a tableau of barbarism and humanity enmeshed within each other. The characters he draws are intensely vivid and precisely rendered. This book deserves its place in the canon. In Levi, humanity found someone to record our darkest chapter, someone who can transport a reader with descriptions such as “[T]he Buna is desperately and essentially opaque and grey. The huge entanglement of iron, concrete, mud, and smoke is the negation of beauty…Within its bounds, not a blade of grass grows, and the soil is impregnated with the poisonous saps of coal and petroleum, and the only things alive are the machines and slaves - and the former more alive than the latter.” Has anything so dark been illuminated with such delicate, flawless language? IF THIS IS A MAN will endure, and outlive all of us. It’s a book that brings out the spirit of what it means to be alive amid so much death. It explores the fundamental truths that will always (eventually) triumph over our darker inner natures. This is a book you’ll return to again and again. THE TRUCE - The companion piece in this volume reveals Levi’s slow, tortuous journey back to freedom. It’s a fascinating read. We think of history in connected blocks - e.g. WWII ended when Germany capitulated, end of story - but there’s much more to it, as Levi reveals. Just because the Russians had chased the SS from the death camps didn’t mean the survivors’ ordeal was over. Europe smoldered, and confusion had settled atop the ruins. Levi still has to form alliances and find food. This book doesn’t have as many breathtaking moments as IF THIS IS A MAN, but it’s still an important work. It’s easy to forget that history is actually countless small, individual stories that cohere into something larger. THE TRUCE brings out those small moments among people who were at the mercy of history, but, thanks to Primo Levi, have been memorialized and rendered immortal. Their stories survive.

J'ai lu ce livre pour la première fois dans ma langue maternelle, l'italien, à l'age de 16 ans. J'en ai été bouleversée. Je l'ai été encore plus lors du suicide de son auteur, acte totalement en désaccord avec ce qu'il avait écrit. J'ai acheté ce livre en anglais pour en faire cadeau à un ami ashkénaze qui n'en connaissait pas l'existence, pour qu'il comprenne qu'il y avait dans les camps une réalité encore plus terrible que peu de rescapés racontent ....

Dovrebbe venire letto da tutti

It goes without saying that books and articles about the Holocaust need to be treated very carefully and with tremendous respect. IF THIS IS A MAN by Primo Levi is like this. This literary experience opens in a truly remarkable manner. It is at once incredibly moving, and immediately horrifying. You canâ(tm)t read more than a handful of pages (or paragraphs, or lines of text even) without feeling overwhelmed and helpless and offended in the most extreme way possible. Conversely, phrases of note are come across early in the book, and the reader may well find themselves thinking how well that sentence was penned and how nicely it sits in the readerâ(tm)s mind. And in the next heartbeat, you may well admonish yourself for finding joy and discovering anything of note or pleasure in the words that describe such a terrible, terrible place. Chapter one is given the title, â(tm)THE JOURNEYâ(tm) and chapter two is called, â(tm)ON THE BOTTOMâ(tm). The opening salvo leaves the reader with a feeling of impending doom (bordering on terror) but chapter two has a much greater emotional impact. Chapter three shows that some prisoners held on to hope longer than others; indeed, the bookâ(tm)s narrator appears to have lost all hope by the start of chapter four. He meets up with a friend from BEFORE who blesses the reader with this delightful quote (taken from location 635 of the kindle version) in answer to the question of why waste time and effort keeping yourself clean with soap when all signs of personal and soulful hygiene are lost within a few seconds of stepping beyond the washroom? âae... We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last â" the power to refuse our consent...â ITIAM is an extraordinary reading experience; and it is a hideous reading experience. You donâ(tm)t really know what to think, and you donâ(tm)t really know where to look. Truth has the peculiar habit of sneaking up on you and staring you right in the face. All you can do is stare back. Think. Question. Resolve. ----------------- April 25, 2015 and the book is finished. As I approach its finale, and as Levi returns home, I come across quotes of text that approach literary highlights and significant moments of the tome itself. I won't quote them here, but I have no doubt you will discover them yourself. For example look at kindle locations 5492 to 5495, and also 5506. What a book. What an experience. What a nightmare. ---------------------

Very good book and everyone should read it. Stories about the holocaust are always invaluable and essential reading

A moving first-hand account of the Auschwitz survivor. Primo Levi, the chemist from Turin was one of the three from group of 650 who survived. This is actually two books- The first (If this is a man) describes his experiences while at Auschwitz while the second (The Truce) is his journey back home after being liberated. As a reader you will be numbed reading his hellish experience and the systematic degradation human beings were subjected to. Through a Q&A section in the end he tries to address some of the question’s readers may have after having read the book. The book will disturb you and force you to question- How could this really happen?