Customer Reviews

Survival In Auschwitz

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

It would be easy to bluntly horrify the reader in a book about life in a death camp, but Levi is not content to appeal to the emotions. He has an intellectual fascination with details, and the psychology of genocide. By a dispassionate and careful treatment of the very difficult material, he manages to write a compelling book about a terrible subject. And the emotional effect does not suffer from this approach--because Levi does not manipulate them, the reader's feelings are deeper and more lasting.

In one chapter, Levi describes how many of the prisoners, after fourteen hours of manual labor, would assemble in one corner of the camp in a market. They would trade rations and stolen goods. Levi describes how the market followed classical economic laws. Whenever I remember this I am freshly amazed at the resilience of life, and the ability of people to live and think and work in the most adverse conditions. It is remarkable that I finished a book about the Holocaust with a better opinion of mankind than I started with; I think the fact that the book affected me this way is the best recommendation

I actually read this book over six years ago for a class I was taking on the Holocaust, I came upon this book on amazon while searching another and felt compelled to come in and put in my bit on it. Even after several years, the experience of reading this book is so deeply felt. If you want a vivid account on what it was like to be a Jew in Auschwitz, read this book. I won't go into a lot of detail, since it's been so long but what I remember most is: While reading it at one point I had to put the book down and remind myself..If I'm hungrey, I can just go to the fridge, If I'm thirsty, I can go to the kitchen for a glass of water, if I am cold, I can turn up the heat...and I felt I was living in pure luxury. In this book you learn that anything has value, a piece of paper can be stuck in your shoe to keep your feet warm, a button will serve some purpose, as will a piece of string. If you find anything, you pick it up. And at one point in the book as Primo Levi and other prisoners are standing near a barbed wire fence in the dead cold of winter he writes, (I am paraphasing) If at this time last year in this spot, any of us knew we'd be here through another winter, we would have touched the fence right then. But we don't, because of only one thing, hope.

In a more perfect life, this book should be science fiction. Primo Levi deposits us in a world where the typical convivality that makes human society bearable has been eliminated and replaced by a horrible premise: humans may only live if they can do work useful to the state. "Survival in Auschwitz" plays the theme out. Those who are unable to work are immediately killed, using the most efficient means possible. Those who survive must find ways to maintain the illusion of usefulness with the least possible exertion. Instead of brotherhood, there is commerce, a black market where a stolen bar of soap is traded for a loaf of bread; the soap allows the owner to maintain a more healthy appearance while the bread feeds its owner for another day. We see property in its most base form. A spoon, a bowl, a few trinkets cleverly used, that is all a person can hold at a time. It's instructive to read this book as an insight into homelessness. What kind of place is this where we create humiliated zombies, shuffling behind their carts containing all their worldly possessions? How long can we let the State fight against the innate emotion that tells us that no-one should go hungry while we eat and no-one should be homeless while we have shelter?

What always amazes me about the Holocaust is the sheer improbability of the story of each of its survivors. This is the horror. For every shining genius of the stature of Primo Levi, there are thousands of other amazing people, gassed and murdered in the showers filled with Zyklon-B.

This book from bnpublishing contains serious multiple errors, sometimes five per page, that disrespect the author and the Holocaust and force the reader to stop and try to figure out the author's real meaning. Book is full of incorrect or missing punctuation (such as periods), words and names spelled different ways from one sentence to the next, random capitalization, run-on sentences, grammatical and spelling errors in English, French, and German. "Figfit" is not a word. Neither are "infaticable," "aroupd," or "mochery." The phrase is "flash of intuition," not "flask." The sign over every concentration camp was "Arbeit Macht Frei," not "Fret." You say, "avec moi," which means "with me," not "avec mot" which means "with word." Phrases like "there were no dark cold air had the smell" (p. 107) stop the reader dead. Very disrespectful of the author and the subject. Levi was a brilliant man with astounding powers of observation and recall for his hellish experiences. His words deserve to be preserved better than this.

There are reasons why it is difficult to review a book like this. First, it is a translation so it is hard to tell whether problems with prose belong to the author or the translator. Second, it is a Holocaust memoir which means criticizing it feels like criticizing the author's experiences. And yet, if we are going to do justice to any piece of writing, a reader has to be willing to be honest about his reactions to it. My reaction is simple: I think this is a good piece of writing but not a great one.

Despite it's brevity, I found this a very difficult book to get through. I wanted very much to be moved by Levi's experiences but it wasn't until the final section, "The Story of Ten Days," that I really felt emotion--that I connected to the author's fight for survival. Most of the time I felt detached because the writing felt very clinical to me. Unlike Elie Weisel's Night, for example, a memoir I've read many times, which grabs me from the first page and doesn't let go.

This is not to discount the horror of Auschwitz's nor Levi's obvious suffering. I guess it's just that, strange as it may sound, I want to be drawn into the author's horror and share his plight. I rarely had that feeling here. However, there is no doubt that this book offers a unique insight into the Auschwitz experience and cannot be discounted. Anyone interested in trying to understand the insanity that was the Holocaust needs to read it.

This edition of Levi's book is an insult to the memory of a great writer. Not only is the translation inept, the editing sloppy (multiple typos), and the format kitschy, but--and this is unconscionable--the publishers have excised Levi's Introduction and his great poem which precede the text. This is a disgrace. Hayden White

The worst atrocity Levi describes at Auschwitz is not the gassings, which he did not witness, or the periodic selections of the weak for gassing, or the beatings, or the hangings, or the routine brutality, or the starvation, or the destructive labor that was designed to work the prisoners to death. It is the moral degradation of the prisoners by their desparate need to survive in those conditions.

An earlier reviewer writes, "We see property in its most base form. A spoon, a bowl, a few trinkets cleverly used, that is all a person can hold at a time." In fact, we see the absence of property. Hobbes wrote that "liberty in the state of nature is the liberty to be knocked over the head for a handfull of acorns." The Lager at Auschwitz was a state of nature. As Levi describes it, anything you possessed would be stolen by anyone the instant you took your eyes off it. Complete individuality was the only road to survival. Trust was fatal. No one could endure, however strong or lucky, unless they were ready to sacrifice any other prisoner at any time for any scrap of food, clothing, or respite from the crushing labor.

In the chapter "The Drowned and the Saved," Levi portrays four successful survivors, who each, in different ways, looked out only for himself. Each was, of necessity, completely heartless. Levi, a gentle humanist, despises the type, and he could not forgive the Germans for reducing humanity to that level.

Since Levi survived to tell about it, he himself must have done and been what he despised. Perhaps that contributed to his eventual suicide.

Levi's Survival In Auschwitz is a moving, impassioned and elegantly written memoir of his time in Auschwitz. He published it, however, with a preface, in which he talks about how racism spreads, and an afterword, in which he discusses readers' questions. These sections are extremely important to an understanding of his book, and are fascinating.

This edition CUT OUT both the preface and the afterword!!! Do yourself a favor and get a version that includes the whole text--this one does not. I was so shocked when I saw it that I thought it was a bootleg edition. The previous edition is still out there--NOT published by Classic House books, whoever they are.

This book is a pregnant reminiscence of life in a German concentration camp during World War II: naked struggle for survival, hunger, brutal egoism, breaking of mental resistance by forcing the execution of senseless repetitive tasks (cleansing), treating of the inmates as a herd of cattle or as pure numbers, public executions.

Primo Levi analyzes the different more or less successful strategies of survival: organizing (stealing, smuggling, barter) or long time planning for a privileged position.

The living conditions were terrible: bitter coldness, physically (climate) as well as mentally (one was ruthlessly left to only one's own devices).
Also the Matthew effect played in full: 'who haves, shall be given; who doesn't have, shall be taken'.
Yet, notwithstanding these soul-destroying circumstances the author didn't loose his faith in humanity, because of a few unselfish deeds by some inmates.

Primo Levi wrote this profound human document as a sinister warning, for those inhuman racist treatments could happen again.

Not to be missed.

I also recommend the works of Jorge Semprun and Imre Kertesz about the same themes.

I stopped reading books of the Holocaust several years ago simply because the stories that come out of the Holocaust are heart-wrenching, bitter, courgaeous, guilt-ridden .... all of the emotions and thoughts that we human have produced can be a lot to digest at one time.

I was at my parents' house when I saw this book lying on the coffee table. It was a book lent to my dad by his secretary's daughter, who just finished a course on the Holocaust and this was one of the required readings. I picked it up and from the preface, I was hooked by the author's precise and thoughtful wording. It is not an emotional book ~~ it is a book about survival. It is an observation of the "Lager," where Levi was held in. It was a clinical look as well ~~ it was his way of surviving and denying his humanness. It is definitely not an emotional rehashing of his time in the concentration camps, especially at Auschwitz, which is the worst of them all. I also get the feeling that he sometimes has an air of disbelief around him, like it's not really happening ~~ it's a nightmare that he never could wake up from.

I would rate it a Five Star but I don't love this book. I thoroughly appreciate the discourse Levi has shared with us. It is a look from a survior who didn't color it with his emotions ~~ yes, it happened and this is what happened. It wasn't till the very end of this book where he described the ten days in the infirmary after the 20,000 "healthy" prisoners were marched into oblivion with the Germans, that he showed any emotion. It was then he allowed himself to be a man again, instead of a "Halfinge" ~~ a slave. He never put his survival to fate or to a higher being. He put it to luck. He was lucky to be sick at the right time. And he was.

5-28-06