Rating: 
Summary: A Review of Levi's Survival in Auschwitz
Review: Primo Levi's memoir, Survival in Auschwitz, is a moving account of one young man's struggle for survival in the notorious Polish concentration camp. Levi employs a unique narrative structure, emphasizing the power of words both thematically and stylistically. Levi is only twenty-five when he enters the camp, and his storytelling does much to reveal the devastating impact that concentration camps had on the psyche and on the spirit.
Levi confronts the harsh reality of what life in Auschwitz means, and how different it is from any form of civilization. "Here the struggle to survive is without respite," he writes, "because everyone is desperately and ferociously alone" (88). One of the evil images that haunts Levi will haunt readers as well: "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" (90).
In clear contrast to the camp's dehumanizing effects on its victims, Levi uses language to stir the hearts of his readers. In a kind of dictionary of suffering, he gives the reader the terms of his old existence: Buna, where young men labor in a factory that will never produce synthetic rubber; Ka-Be, the infirmary where Levi is granted a few weeks' rest to recover from a foot injury, and Selekcja, the Polish word for "selection," that seals the fate of those marked for the crematorium. Because the camp contains Jews and other prisoners from all parts of Europe, facility with multiple languages represents a survival tool as well as a mark of education. Levi tells the success story of young man, Henri, who is able to cultivate many contacts because he speaks four languages. In one of the book's most heart-stirring passages, Levi attempts to translate Dante's canto of Ulysses into French in an effort to increase a friend's understanding of his heritage and the remnants of his humanity (112).
As Levi notes in the foreword, his narrative is not strictly chronological-the main events are in 1944, but Levi does not give dates to events until the last few days in camp, after the Germans have evacuated. In one chapter, Levi has to ask himself, "How many months have gone by since we entered the camp?" Eventually he asks the more sobering question, "how many of us will be alive at the new year?" (136). That Levi can begin to keep track of time after the camp's liquidation signifies his return to a life where the future is more than another day of deprivation and suffering. At one point, Levi notes that the camp term for "never," is morgen früh, German for tomorrow morning (133).
Though Levi's book is powerful for the factual events it recounts, the questions it raises leave the most lasting impact. Survival in Auschwitz asks what makes a human, what it takes to destroy that humanity, and humanity is recovered. Many readers wishing to learn more about the Holocaust or concentration camps will find Levi's work powerful and enriching. Perhaps more importantly, these readers will continue to ask Levi's questions in today's society.
Rating: 
Summary: The Surival of Humanity
Review: Primo Levi's recollections of "life" in Auschwitz is a truly horrifying and enlightening account. Life must be in quotation marks, because even though Levi survived the horrors of the concentration camp, his time there was certainly not living - only dying. Levi begins his introduction by warning the reader that these memories may not flow in order but are recorded the way he remembers them irregardless of continuity.
An Italian Jew, Levi was an outlaw when captured in his mid-twenties and deported to Auschwitz. His recall for the tiniest details is amazing, but he credits the fact that he was always thinking as his main means of survival. He describes in vivid detail what it was like to be in the railroad cars transporting them to the camp, the selection process and what one acclimated to life inside the barbed wire fences. As a higher number, Levi is inexperienced and must learn how to endure being treated worse than animals by the Germans and his superiors. He vivdly describes his trials in working and living, fighting over and for every little thing that could help him survive.
Levi concludes his autobiographical account with a chapter that reads like a diary entry, reviewing his last ten days in the camp after the Germans had fled, before the camp was liberated by foreign armies. Perhaps at times it seems that Levi is detached and lacks emotion in his writing - he doesn't allow himself to think too long about these people he misses, who were brutually snatched away from him forever. Rather, he is straightforward in recording the facts as he remembers them, as horrifying and unbelievable as some of them are.
The afterword, in this edition, by Philip Roth allows the reader a chance to "interact" with Primo Levi. Roth asks him about his experiences and the influences behind his writings, which are mainly all autobiographical. Levi acknowledges that he is truly lucky - his family survived the Holocaust when others didn't. He hasn't forgotten his trials and experiences. They have shaped his entire life and ways of thinking.
Rating: 
Summary: Tragic Story... Tragic Writing Ability
Review: Primo Levi's Story tears at your heart, but so does his ability as a writer. His tale is informative, and truthful. It gives us deep insight into the world of Auschwitz, the most terrible Concentration Camp in Nazi Germany... Levi just isn't a writer. If you are a fanatic of this period in history, and particularly this aspect of the war, give the book a try, it will add to your knowledge, it just wont be a fun process.
Rating:
Summary: A gut-wrenching tale
Review: Reading Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi was one of the most dificult experiences of my life. With each turn of the page came a new horror, I found it dififult to read more then a chapter at a time, and yet with horrific fascination I was also unable to put down the book. His stories of human nature rock the reader in a way that is unfathomable to someone who has never read a novel of this type. His original title "If this were a man" is far more descriptive then Survival in Auschwitz, and the reader will be shocked by the tales he tells.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: Reading this novel for a college course, I expected the brutality I remembered from Elie Wiesel's Night (also an excellent book). Levi conveys the horror of Auschwitz without the level of gore one would expect. The writing itself is contemplative and concise. The reader is inspired to go beyond the words Levi presents when he describes the barter system of the camp or when illness swept through the masses. Levi describes less of the slaughter of Auschwitz, but the effect had is incredible. The writing may seem to explain just the basic facts, but it presents more emotion than I ever thought it could.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone should read this book
Review: Survival In Auschwitz is a memoir of Primo Levi's experience at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. It is a deeply personal story which gives the reader a close look at what daily life was like in the camps. Millions of Jews were treated like animals, given insufficient amounts of food to eat, and worked to death in these camps. Everyone should read this book so that nothing like this ever happens again. We are all lucky that #174517 lived to tell his story. He wrote this book for us, and we should thank him by reading it.
Rating:
Summary: The best book written in the past 500 years
Review: The only regret about this book is the wrong translation of his title. (It must be IF THIS IS A MAN). But besides that, is a trully amazing and neccesary book to comprehend the real truth about the Holocaust and his effects in our world. It must be mandatory to read in every school of the world.
Rating:
Summary: The State of Nature
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but there's just something about it...
Review: There is just something about this book that I didn't like. I can't really put my finger on it, though. I have read other Auschwitz accounts that I liked much better than this. I am not saying that this is a poorly written book, or that I think it was embellished. For one thing, I got a little confused about his purpose writing this book. Was he giving his personal account, or was he giving the account of the average Italian Jew in the Lager? Did he cry at night, or did he remain as objectionable and emotionless as he portrayed his experience in his book? Like I said, it is a good read. I would suggest it to anyone. Make sure you have a translation book or website nearby to help get you through the numerous German, French, Italian, and Greek phrases that appear throughout the book with no explaination as to what they mean. So, three stars, to me, means I don't regret buying it and reading it, but I probably won't pick it up in a few years and read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Fatti non foste a viver come bruti
Review: 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 abous the same themes.
|
