Bioarchaeology and Climate Change: A View from South Asian Prehistory (Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives)

Primo Levi’s reflection on humanity in crisis: Survival in Auschwitz (If This is a man) Primo Levi’s memoir, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, translated by Giulio Einaudi), is not just about the author’s survival in the notorious Nazi concentration camp, but above all about the survival of his humanity after enduring such a grueling process of dehumanization. Published in 1947 under the Italian title If This is a Man (Se questo e un uomo), the author doesn’t claim to offer new information in this autobiographical book. Nor does he wish to level fresh accusations against the Nazis. Written in a calm, observational tone, Survival in Auschwitz sets out “to furnish documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind” (9). Thoughtful and thought provoking, the narrative constitutes a reflection on the power—and limits—of forgiveness. In an interview published by the New Republic on February 16, 1986, Levi announces that he did not harbor feelings of hatred towards the Germans. He explains: “I regard hatred as bestial and crude, and prefer that my actions and thoughts be the product, as far as possible, of reason. Much less do I accept hatred directed collectively at an ethnic group, for example at all the Germans.” Levi views the Holocaust not as a reflection of the German nation, but as a much broader crisis of humanity. Nation after nation fell under the Nazi spell and power as many engaged in terrific acts of cruelty. Does this mean that the author absolves the Nazi of moral responsibility for their actions? Not at all. In the same interview, Primo Levi qualifies: “All the same, I would not want my abstaining from explicit judgment to be confused with an indiscriminate pardon.” He explains that he can only forgive those who show--through their actions, not just their words--that they take responsibility and feel guilty for their crimes against humanity. He is speaking, above all, of the crimes of ordinary men and women. In Survival in Auschwitz Levi describes how inflicting harm upon other human beings becomes completely routine. Without harboring any particular hatred, Nazi officers conduct the selection process and send hundreds of thousands of people—including practically all women and children—to their deaths in the gas chambers. One of the questions that continues to preoccupy Levi throughout his life is how this mass murder can become commonplace—little more than doing one’s job--and how much the German population at large knew about it and allowed it to happen. In the 1986 New Republic interview Levi, characteristically, offers a very reasonable answer: because totalitarian regimes function very differently from democracies it’s not possible to have a dissemination of truthful information and open criticism of despicable actions in totalitarian regimes that we can have in democratic societies. Yet, by the same token, Levi remarks, “it was not possible to hide the existence of the enormous concentration camp apparatus from the German people. What’s more, it was not (from the Nazi point of view) even desirable. Creating and maintaining an atmosphere of undefined terror in the country was one of the aims of Nazism.” Perhaps one of the most profound observations in Survival in Auschwitz is the statement that just as absolute happiness is impossible, so is absolute unhappiness, even in the hellish conditions of the Nazi concentration camps. Human beings gradually adapt to each phase of the process of dehumanization: starting with the isolation from the rest of the population in Jewish ghettos; to the order to gather by the train station to be transported in cattle trains to the concentration camps (he describes how lovingly mothers pack for the trip clothes and nourishment for their children, p.91); to the brutal conditions of the camps themselves. At each phase, victims focus on the moment-to-moment fight for survival. Heroism in such adverse conditions becomes almost impossible; while, conversely, as Levi observes, “to sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the discipline of the work and the camp” (Survival in Auschwitz, 90). In such a context, the quest for survival assumes heroic dimensions in itself, as is the ability to endure extreme hardship while remaining human and humane. Few are able achieve this: among those few is Levi’s friend, Lorenzo, the man who motivates him to do the same and whom he remembers fondly for the rest of his life. When asked, in the New Republic interview, why a grander, more ambitious heroism didn’t occur in the camps—“How is it that there were no large-scale revolts? —Levi reminds readers that in the heavily guarded concentration camps, “Escape was difficult and extremely dangerous. The prisoners were debilitated, besides being demoralized, by hunger and ill treatment. Their heads were shaved, their striped clothing was immediately recognizable, and their wooden clogs made silent and rapid walking impossible.” Moreover, the prisoners were in a foreign country whose inhabitants were largely hostile to them or, at best, indifferent to their plight and whose local language they didn’t speak. As for revolts, Levi points out, they existed—in Treblinka, Sobibor and Birkenau. However, “They did not have much numerical weight. Like the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, they represented, rather, examples of extraordinary moral force. In every instance they were planned and led by prisoners who were privileged in some way, and consequently in better physical and spiritual condition than the average camp prisoner.” Although he remained, philosophically speaking, a humanist and rationalist throughout his life despite the severe trauma he experienced in the Nazi concentration camps, Levi eventually succumbed to its effects: the depression and nightmares that haunted him throughout his life. In April 1987 he died after falling from his third-story apartment in Turin, which many close to him considered a suicide. Yet he did not write, suffer and die in vain. Through his memoirs, books and interviews, Primo Levi left behind an invaluable intellectual legacy that helps us recall, commemorate, and understand better the worst humanitarian crisis in our history. Claudia Moscovici, Holocaust Memory

Survival in Auschwitz Primo Levi With a poet’s skill for detail and evocative illustration, Primo Levi describes what happens to men when their humanity is systematically denied them. Published in Italy in 1958, as If This is a Man, the English title Survival in Auschwitz was a publisher’s decision. The original title maintains the more suggestive issue behind the book. Title aside, Levi’s book is perhaps the best book written about the existential experience of living in Auschwitz. It is also as clear a statement possible about how fragile is our humanity, and how easily ideological driven differences within a society can transform common citizens into sadists. Levi understood the camps to be a science experiment designed to eliminate the niceties that gird and enable individual and collective human co-existence. Hence, when the Jews arrived at the camps the Germans separated the fathers, the mothers, and their children from each other. They took away their clothes, cut off their hair, replaced their names with a number, and talked about them as if they were objects (stück). A couple hours after arriving in Auschwitz, all which remained of their humanity was their bodies. Their bodies would soon all look and smell like the living skeletons we associate with the concentration camps. Almost everyone who was not immediately killed was to put to this test: You are unconditionally alone. You will receive a minimum amount of food, the clothes we supply you are not meant to keep you warm, your shoes will rub your feet raw and the sores will get infected, you will get up at dawn and work throughout the day, and every day will be the same until we decide you must go to the chimneys. Moreover, no human kindness will be shown you. We do not consider you a human being. You will quickly learn to trust no one. Leave your spoon or bowl unguarded for a second and it will disappear. Sharing and caring for anyone but your self is a fool’s project; “eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.” For the Jews, Auschwitz was not a punishment but a manner of living assigned to them by the SS. Life was reduced to “primordial mechanism.” The consequences of this treatment and how it plays out are superbly recounted by Levi. He writes that few prisoners consciously resigned themselves to their fate. Rather, they sank into the “opaque torpor of beasts broken in by blows, whom the blows no longer hurt.” They had lost their selves, become hollow, reduced to suffering and needs, fraternized in a uniform of internal desolation. Those who followed the rules were usually dead within three months. Only men with one of three qualities survived: 1) Those that they were physically powerful, 2) those who were ruthless and brutal, and 3) those that had a skill the Germans needed. In such a condition Levi asks if there any meaning to ‘good’ or ‘evil’, ‘just’ and ‘unjust’? Certainly our moral world could not survive. If that goes, so goes our humanity. Levi survived. He was lucky. At the beginning of his second winter in the camp the Germans opened a lab and needed Chemists. He was one and proved it. Inside the chemistry lab Levi had two things going for him. He was insulated from the winter, and he could steal equipment from the lab and sell it for food. Nonetheless, he had got to the point, as he said, where “I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.” He had been brought to the bottom, made hollow. Born 31 July 1919, Levi died 11 April 1987. This is a great book. Read it.

Even though I read this book for a college course, it is a fairly simple read which is definitely accessible to high school readers. There are some graphic and emotionally disturbing scenes - this is not a lighthearted subject, but it is compelling, heart-wrenching, insightful, and perhaps, inspiring. I read Night by Elie Wiesel in high school, and I think the two books have interesting similarities and differences. Both Levi and Wiesel survived Auschwitz, but Levi remained ill in the camp and was liberated by Russian forces while Wiesel was forced to evacuate during the death marches. Wiesel is also more more emotionally invested in his account. Levi writes in a style that is more impartial and removed. I would not recommend reading Survival in Auschwitz over Night - I think both should be read and I think that the accounts are complimentary. At one point, when Levi is remembering a close friend of his who died on the death marches, he says "Perhaps someone will write their story one day" (155). I found it satisfying that someone did write that story - Wiesel did. Academically, this book can be easily taught as part of an English language or history course. Levi originally wrote in Italian, but he really was a master of rhetoric and fortunately, the importance of his word choice translates really well into English. I ended up using this book as a case study of dehumanization for a paper, and about half of my analysis was literary while the other half was historical. Levi wrote this book with a sense of urgency. He was afraid that people would forget the Holocaust, and with the Holocaust about to pass out of living memory, I think this is a very important time for this book to be read so that this truly horrific historical event is not forgotten.

Primo Levi's book is a living testament to how a gifted author can convey the most intense and gristly scene, without resorting to the outright grotesque. With aplomb that few have, Levi is able to give a rather full and moving description of his personal experience in Auschwitz and its surrounding camps. Interesting is that he never makes a complaint, as there is no use to do so. Even while in the worst possible imaginable human conditions, only survival has real value and lends motivation to go on. In Auschwitz, all was just one long day, that ended either in surprise liberation, as did happen for some, or death, which did happen for most. Levi was somewhat fortunate, and did not enter the death camps until late in the war. His length of internment was part of what helped him survive. Yet oddly, it was only a mere fraction of the whole system needed to survive under such conditions. Ironically, Levi did eventually commit suicide, after becoming world renown as a writer. While this is uncommon for Holocaust survivors, it is most predominant amongst writers, artists and poets. But before leaving, Levi left us some of the finest examples of how to convey an unbelievable situation in a believable manner. His work and his choice of verbiage is uncommonly artistic. And the book gives the reader a very real and present understanding of just how the conditions really were. As unbelievable as one can imagine, is in fact, how they were.

Really interesting and well-written. Definitely recommend this one.

This is an outstanding book. This shows in great detail the horror of the death camps of Nazi Germany. Primo Levi brings us into the Lager at Auschwitz, and shows us not only the horror of the treatment of the Jews who are imprisoned there, but also their degeneration either to death or to creatures able to do anything to survive, and able to do barely little else. He shows us the complex social structure that builds up in the death camp, and shows us what it takes to survive it. He does this all without laying any blame on those who survived, and asks for no pity either. He then shows his own re-entry into humanity, as he works while infected with scarlet fever to save 10 other men. As a previous reviewer said, this should be a work of science fiction, but it is a description of a descent into hell guided by Nazi demons. Oddly, Nazi Germans play a very small role in the book. He spends most of the time describing the interactions between the prisoners, and not with the Germans. This book will move you, and give you new insight into how horrible the holocaust really was. Truly an outstanding work. If you read no other book about the holocaust, this should be the one.

This book is not for the faint of heart, and it will disturb you. It is truthful, direct, and powerful. What strikes me about this book, is how different it is from other forms of holocaust literature. Unlike other books Primo delivers a perfect and unbiased recollection what he experienced and skips the melodrama. Primo understands the incredible metaphors that underly what really happened, and he lets them speak for themselves rather than excruciatingly describe particular moments of his life. It amazes me how a man who was so tormented was able to make this type of an account without pressing anger through his keystrokes. What is apparent however, is a clear sense of frustration as he recounts his story, and for that I completely understand. Although the book is titled "Survival in Auschwitz," the original and true name of this work is: "If This Is A Man." This question could not better represent the essential question that lies at the heart of this book and I believe is a must read for all humans. Really, this book explores the nature of humanity and provides a forum for understanding how such atrocities as genocide have and continue to exist today.

This book was first described to me as the adult perspective of Wisel's "Night." This book gives you the perspective of a man in Auschwitz with only survival in mind. In a sense, moments of the book feel like a how-to guide on surviving a concentration camp. The way Levi breaks down the rules of the camp and how to scam the system, he exploits the horrible truth of the camp; the entire experience is full of senseless/pointless cruelty and labor. There are many moments of philosophical questions and speculations and other moments of disbelief and anger. There is a scene where he is desperate to remember sections of "Dante's Inferno" that was particularly moving to me. If you enjoyed Night, this book will amaze you.

A must read

One of the most outstanding books I have read. The author writes his experiences leading up to and including his time at Auschwitz. Yes, he stated the facts, but he also created fine character sketches of those who were around him. The book showed his insightful awareness and beautifully narrated analysis of the reactions of others and of himself. He used many words which I was not aware of but now are part of my repertoire (handy to have the smart phone nearby and look up those words). This was not burdensome for me because he didn't use the words to impress but rather to express his thoughts precisely.

Quick delivery, book although, used was in excellent condition. Good price

I bought this as a gift for my mum whose father was Polish and died at the end of the war. Mum really enjoyed it and would recommend

Great book, more people should read it