Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
Abacus (1991), Edition: New Ed, 400 pages
Description
With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a "magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I've ever known" - PHILIP ROTH
User reviews
LibraryThing member annbury
Primo Levi was a 24 year old Italian Jew when he was sent to Auschwitz in February of 1944, with 650 other Italian Jews. He survived there for almost a year: in January of 1945, the camp was abandoned by the Germans, and shortly thereafter the Red Army liberated the camp. Only 20 others in his
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group survived with him. This book records his experiences in Auschwitz in clear, measured, and horrifyingly evocative prose. The camp was designed to grind all self-respect, all morality, all honor and all love out of its inmates. Amazingly, given the constant cruelty and deprivation to which the inmates were subjected, it did not always succeed. Levi survived because another man brought him soup every day, without thought of gain: Levi says of him "This was a man". So too was Levi, who retained the ability to think of others throughout his ordeal. This is a very hard book to read, but it should be read. It shows vividly what is worst about humanity, and also shows how goodness can -- occasionally -- survive that worst. Show Less
LibraryThing member withnail67
One of the great accounts of inhumanity and triumph of the human spirit. The q & a in this edition are especially valued when I teach this book.
LibraryThing member herschelian
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist who was taken by the Nazis. He survived the Holocaust to speak and write of his experiences. A man of moral stamina and intellectual poise his books should be read every generation.
LibraryThing member janeeyre37
Definitely one of the hardest books I have ever read in terms of harrowing content, but it remains with me still.
LibraryThing member Ramirez
We must never forget.
Especially now as time flows on and memory is getting thinner and thinner... we must remember.
I am not religious and i think that every kind of sense of guilt toward some supernatural being is foolish: but we must feel ashamed and share the regret fot that carnage for ever and
Peace.
Especially now as time flows on and memory is getting thinner and thinner... we must remember.
I am not religious and i think that every kind of sense of guilt toward some supernatural being is foolish: but we must feel ashamed and share the regret fot that carnage for ever and
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ever, in order not to let it happen again.Peace.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
How could this be anything but harrowing? And yet the author has survived, kept some portion of humanity about him, the tiniest shred. Necessary.
LibraryThing member shirleybell
I'm so glad I read this, and yet it's hard to say I "enjoyed" it, due to the subject matter, however, what I can say is this book is an important one to read, as it tells a different story from that which we usually hear about life and death in the concentration camps. Primo Levi survived 11 months
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and this book explains just what he had to do in order to survive, and his long journey home after the war had ended. I learned so much from reading this, which I believe was the author's intention. Show Less
LibraryThing member PollyMoore3
Everyone should have to read this. The title "If This is a Man" can be read in two ways: the Nazis could only treat the Jews in this way by pretending they were not human, "untermenschen". But if these Nazis are men, how can they behave in such an inhuman way?
LibraryThing member LovingLit
This book. It is sad and beautiful, tragic and uplifting. Levi has the admirable ability to transcend malice, and with this work simply seeks understanding of the people and the circumstances that led him to be incarcerated in an Auschwitz work camp. The first book (this edition is two books in
Then in book 2, The Truce, his long and wayward journey from camp liberation back to Turin, Italy. Although free, he and his fellow refugees are at the mercy of the liberators and locals for food, shelter, and transport home. His observations are so detailed, and reported with a non-judgemental eye. When travelling through Germany, he writes:
I felt that everybody should interrogate us, read in our faces who we were, and listen to our tale in humility. But no one looked us in the eyes, no one accepted the challenge; they were deaf, blind and dumb, imprisoned in their ruins, as in a fortress of wilful ignorance, still strong, still capable of hatred and contempt, still prisoners of their old tangle of pride and guilt.
Levi credits his ability to move on from his experiences, such as it is even possible for one to do that, to the cathartic effect that writing about them had. This edition ends with a series of questions Levi has been asked at various speaking events, where he so eloquently and reasonably tackles the big political questions surrounding the Holocaust. So many of which are scarily relatable to today's leadership of the US. If for this reason alone, people should read this book.
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one) outlines camp life, the chilling morning wake up call that remains nightmare-fodder for years to come, the selections, the tormenting hunger and the emotional depths that are reached when faced with such depravity and violence on a day to day basis, the cold, the tenuous relationship they all have with life itself. Also, the friendships, and small mercies that keep him going. Then in book 2, The Truce, his long and wayward journey from camp liberation back to Turin, Italy. Although free, he and his fellow refugees are at the mercy of the liberators and locals for food, shelter, and transport home. His observations are so detailed, and reported with a non-judgemental eye. When travelling through Germany, he writes:
I felt that everybody should interrogate us, read in our faces who we were, and listen to our tale in humility. But no one looked us in the eyes, no one accepted the challenge; they were deaf, blind and dumb, imprisoned in their ruins, as in a fortress of wilful ignorance, still strong, still capable of hatred and contempt, still prisoners of their old tangle of pride and guilt.
Levi credits his ability to move on from his experiences, such as it is even possible for one to do that, to the cathartic effect that writing about them had. This edition ends with a series of questions Levi has been asked at various speaking events, where he so eloquently and reasonably tackles the big political questions surrounding the Holocaust. So many of which are scarily relatable to today's leadership of the US. If for this reason alone, people should read this book.
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LibraryThing member joannajuki
My first real understanding of the scale of the horror of Wolrd War II, and the depth of the horror of the camps.
LibraryThing member john257hopper
In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I have read what is probably the most famous memoir from a survivor. If This is a Man is, however, rather different from other such memoirs I have read, as its theme is not so much the detail of his lived experiences, or
My edition was paired with its sequel the somewhat longer The Truce, which details the author's lengthy enforced peregrinations across eastern and central Europe to eventually get home well into the autumn of 1945. This is less immediately memorable as a read, but does contain descriptions of the many colourful characters of different nationalities with whom he makes his itinerant life. Finally, the book ends with the author providing lengthy answers to some of the most common questions he was asked in the post-war period by audiences to whom he spoke about his books and his experiences, to ensure the events of the Holocaust remained alive in the minds of succeeding generations as: "Strong though the words of If This is a Man are, they are still weak before the will to deny or forget."
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particular atrocities (though these are of course covered), but what Auschwitz and the Holocaust represented - in the author's words, "the demolition of man": "Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself."; and "if I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen." Notwithstanding these bleak quotes, I did not find this memoir bleak, as throughout his year at Auschwitz, Levi survives by never losing an ultimate belief in human dignity and hope, though, paradoxically, "our wisdom lay in ‘not trying to understand’, not imagining the future, not tormenting ourselves as to how and when it would all be over; not asking others or ourselves any questions." The book ends with the Nazi abandonment of Auschwitz and the notorious death march (which Levi avoided only by virtue of being ill with scarlet fever at the time) culminating, after a ten day period of further struggling with the forces of cold, hunger and disease, with the Red Army liberating the camp on 27 January 1945. My edition was paired with its sequel the somewhat longer The Truce, which details the author's lengthy enforced peregrinations across eastern and central Europe to eventually get home well into the autumn of 1945. This is less immediately memorable as a read, but does contain descriptions of the many colourful characters of different nationalities with whom he makes his itinerant life. Finally, the book ends with the author providing lengthy answers to some of the most common questions he was asked in the post-war period by audiences to whom he spoke about his books and his experiences, to ensure the events of the Holocaust remained alive in the minds of succeeding generations as: "Strong though the words of If This is a Man are, they are still weak before the will to deny or forget."
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LibraryThing member NaggedMan
Would give it six, seven or eight stars it poss. The translation is superb, I just wish I could read the original Italian. I cried. I laughed. Had to put it down from time to time to let the material sink in and get absorbed. Should be on Eng Lit reading lists, even though a translation.
LibraryThing member fmclellan
The second or third or fourth time I have read it. One of the most important works of the 20th century. Still stunned by how people keep on going, in the face of a bottomless abyss. Exhilarating, inspirational, full of an unfathomable spirit.
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1947
1963
Physical description
400 p.; 5.25 inches
ISBN
0349100136 / 9780349100135
UPC
787721855910
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DDC/MDS
| 920 |