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If This Is a Man and The Truce

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A truly amazing book - I cannot promise that you will enjoy it, in fact I can almost guarantee that you will find most of it heart-breaking and painful.

It is a little like watching Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing - on many levels you do not enjoy it but it enthrals you. The subject matter is so important and it is so beautifully made and eloquent that you feel compelled to watch (or read in the case of Levi).

Levi tells the story of his own internment in Auschwitz - he concentrates on the details of everyday life slowing building a vivid picture of how the Nazis were intent on not just killing them but breaking their spirit, humiliating them, degrading them. He captures many moments so well that they live on in the mind, for example when he describes how the terrible regime made Jew turn on Jew. He even manages to raise a guilty smile occasionally. For example, he describes the second worst thing that could happen at night was to take out the toilet bucket as it was always full to overflowing and would spill on your feet. The worst thing was when your bunkmate took it out as they shared bunks sleeping head to toe.

Levi is a fantastic writer (try the Periodic Table if you want to read something easier and more enjoyable) with a light touch. He describes his time in Auschwitz calmly, clearly, with great compassion but remarkably objectively; he gives the reader space to think and understand.

A work of heart-breaking genius

Primo Levi is the most insightful, pragmatic realist of all holocaust authors. I have read more than 50 books on the subject, and his insights into what happened, human nature, the (bad) luck of the draw, and the tragedy of his experience are brilliant and by far the most articulate. Somehow, perhaps with his scientific mind, Levi was able to maintain his awareness through an experience that is utterly beyond the scope of imagination. He somehow emerges from the ashes of this horrific epoch like a literary phoenix. He doesn't dwell on the inhuman acts and suffering, although he has a perfect right to do so, but instead offers his account almost from an omniscient perspective. This book contains the best of Primo Levi, but his other writings demand to be read as well. And, if you haven't seen The Truce, starring John Turturro, you should do so. It's not a hundred percent historically accurate, but it is a great presentation.

Primo Levi's "If This is a Man" and "The Truce" remain one of the most horrifyingly realistic depictions of life in Auschwitz. Primo Levi recounts the daily ordeals of life in Auschwitz with a stirring and poignant narration, concentrating on not only the physical and emotional hardship but on another level questioning plainly what it is to be human. Both books present an illuminating view into life in a prison camp, and Primo Levi's narration ensure that no suffering remains untold. An illuminating read.

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.

It's been a while since I read this book. My girlfriend pulled it off my shelf of her own accord, and she's reading it now. It's one of those books that every thinking person should read. Other reviewers have conveyed its gist very well. It's not really like other Holocaust literature, as important as that school is. It's more concerned with the capability of human beings to absolutely degrade one another. Auschwitz is a stewpot in which the worst of human nature bubbles to the top and sets the bar.

One would think the average camp prisoner would have put his head down numbly and hoped to get out alive. Levi somehow was able to observe and work through the ramifications of nearly every aspect of camp life, not with numbness, but with serene clarity (at least as he writes it later). Everything related in this book is literal and symbolic, mundane and profound, degraded yet fundamental. Levi doesn't spare himself, either. As he put it, to die in Auschwitz, all one had to do was play by the rules. He cheated, stole, and turned his back on his fellows in order to stay alive, and no fellow prisoner who knew the rules of Auschwitz would have held it against him. So much for uniting against one's oppressors.

I should add that "The Truce" tells the story of Levi's very circuitous journey home from Poland to Italy, through a post-war Europe that was barely functional on any level. It is less bleak by far than "If This Is A Man", but the insights into human nature are similiarly profound and essential.

That was the number tattooed on Primo Levi's left arm when he was processed into Auschwitz in February 1944. The numbers were assigned in sequence, so by the time Levi arrived in Auschwitz there were few with tattoos of only five digits. In that sense - the sense of being a relatively late arrival - Levi was fortunate. And because Levi, through chance and no doubt through a certain spunk, was able to survive the next year (one of only three who eventually returned home out of 650 in his consignment of Italian Jews), the world is fortunate. Because his memoir of his year at Auschwitz is probably the most significant first-person account of that vile episode of human history.

As many have noted, what distinguishes Levi's account is his restraint, his near superhuman effort to confine his memoir to the perspective of a witness. Although he lapses occasionally, Levi tried to avoid "the lamenting tones of the victim [as well as] the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge." Thus, his memoir has a documentary objectivity that makes it even more chilling.

This particular edition actually contains two of Levi's memoirs. The first, IF THIS IS A MAN, is the memoir described above - the account of his year at Auschwitz, the most harrowing period (ironically) being the post-apocalyptic ten days between the flight of the Nazis and the arrival of the Red Army. (The only prisoners the Nazis left in the camp were those too sick to be marched westwards, towards Germany. Levi, suffering from an attack of scarlet fever, was among the ill left behind. During those ten days, the percentage of corpses on the bunks inside some of the huts rose to fifty percent. Outside the huts, "the number of ravens had increased considerably and everybody knew why.") The second memoir, THE TRUCE, is Levi's account of the nine months between liberation by the Red Army and his arrival home, at last, in Turin, Italy. It is a fascinating and instructive kaleidoscopic picture of the displaced peoples throughout Eastern Europe in the months immediately following the collapse of Nazi Germany. Although not quite the essential document that IF THIS IS A MAN is, it too is well-worth reading. This edition also contains, as an afterword, fifteen pages in which Levi addresses some of the questions frequently asked him, such as "Have you forgiven them [the Germans?]?" and "How can the Nazis' fanatical hatred of the Jews be explained?".

For those who don't know, the title of the first memoir, the classic one, comes from a poem Levi wrote, also entitled "If This Is a Man". It includes these lines:

Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or no.

Those five lines sum up this remarkable book, one that should be read by everyone who considers himself civilized.

This is a moving, powerful pair of books about the Holocaust. The author survived Auschwitz, and chronicles the time there and then, in The Truce, the second of the books in this pair, chronicles his experiences afterwards during the journey back to his home in Italy.

This book is remarkable in that it is emotionally wrenching and honest, yet it is not sensationalist or bitter. It is a stark, first person, intense and wonderful story, written beautifully.

The Holocaust is a terrible part of modern history, and sadly genocide is oft repeated. As those who lived through the Holocaust pass on, it is even more important that memories are preserved, and this book should be a must read for anyone interested in the subject, along with the Black Book.

Note that in the US this book is called Survival in Auschwitz, and that is the only way you will find it in print.

Primo Levi's book is as good as it gets. It is demoralizing and up-lifting, and should be read by anyone interested in history of life in a German concentration camp and the survival of a few Jewish prisoners. We are not so surprised by the outrage that is the concentration camp; it is Primo Levi's wandering return home after the Nazis leave the camp that surprises us. Where there is pain and disgust at Levi's life in the prison, there is great romance in Levi's survival, his caring sense of obligation to his fellow travelers, and the improbable long journey home.

The book has been made into an excellent, if rarely viewed, film.

This book grabs you from the moment you start to read. It is so sad that this time in history occurred & that human's were treated in this fashion. It is almost unbelievable. It is so sad for me to read these books but I find it so educational to hear it from someone who withstood these horrors & lived to tell about them. This authors writting is great & I cannot wait to read his other books, I have ordered all his books & am sorry to hear of his passing. We have lost a great person, I hope after his release from the Germans hell on earth that he enjoyed his life.

As a package, though written many years apart, these two texts provide formidble testament of the human spirit; man reduced in appalling circumstances, and perchance surviving as witness of them. For all the dour grittiness of life under the Nazis, the most impressive realisations, for me, come at the beginning of their evacuation from the camps in the first chapter, 'The Thaw' of,'The Truce' as the Russians arrive to liberate them. The few survivors have the awesome task of reigniting their diminished humanity. In describing this process, Levi is unchallenged as a writer and thinker.The prose takes a more expansive mode without ever losing its grip. Not a word wasted; the pitch, tone perfect. Horrifying, but never numbing, these essential pages should never go out of print. Read them and tell your friends they must also.