Survival In Auschwitz [Paperback]

Primo Levi (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 1, 1995

In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and "Italian citizen of Jewish race," was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi's classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remains a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit. Included in this new edition is an illuminating conversation between Philip Roth and Primo Levi never before published in book form.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Survival in Auschwitz is a mostly straightforward narrative, beginning with Primo Levi's deportation from Turin, Italy, to the concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland in 1943. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in the camp. Even Levi's most graphic descriptions of the horrors he witnessed and endured there are marked by a restraint and wit that not only gives readers access to his experience, but confronts them with it in stark ethical and emotional terms: "[A]t dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him something to eat today?" --Michael Joseph Gross

Review

Italo Calvino One of the most important and gifted writers of our time.

David Caute, New Statesman Survival in Auschwitz is a stark prose poem on the deepest sufferings of man told without self-pity, but with a muted passion and intensity, an occasional cry of anguish, which makes it one of the most remarkable documents I have ever read.

Meredith Tax, The Village Voice More than anything else I've read or seen, Levi's books helped me not only to grasp the reality of genocide but to figure out what it means for people like me who grew up sheltered from the storm.

The Times Literary Supplement (London) Survival in Auschwitz has the inevitability of the true work of art.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1 edition (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684826801
• ISBN-13: 978-0684826806
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (142 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > History of Religion
  • #9 in Books > History > Europe > Poland
  • #52 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Jewish

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 86 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars dispassionate but moving account of the durability of life June 9, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

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

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Takes you there September 4, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

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.

120 of 136 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Passionate & instructive insight into the Holocaust July 31, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

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.