If This Is a Man


If This Is a Man is a memoir by Jewish Italian writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.

Background

Primo Levi was born in 1919 in Turin. His forebears were Piedmontese Jews.
He studied chemistry at the University of Turin, graduating summa cum laude in 1942, notwithstanding the restrictions imposed by Mussolini's racial laws. In 1942 he found a position with a Swiss drug company in Milan. With the German occupation of northern and central Italy in 1943, Levi joined a partisan group in Aosta Valley in the Alps.
He was arrested in December 1943 and transported to Auschwitz in February 1944. He remained there until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. If This Is a Man recounts his experiences in the camp.

Chapters

  1. In the first chapter, "The Journey", Levi describes his experience as a partisan and his capture by fascist militia in December 1943. He is transferred to a detention camp near Modena. After several weeks, the six hundred and fifty Italian Jews in the camp are told that they will be leaving, their destination Auschwitz. They are crammed into freight cars without water; the train travels slowly through Austria, Czechoslovakia and into Poland. On arrival, those capable of work are separated from those who are not.
  2. In "On the Bottom", Levi describes how he and his companions are stripped, shorn and showered. They are given ragged clothes which they are forced to carry as they run, naked, to another barrack. Looking at each other, they realise that they have reached the bottom: no human condition more wretched exists. A number is tattooed on each man's arm. At the end of the day they are assembled in the square, where they watch their new comrades march back from work. Levi describes the laws, rites and taboos of the camp.
  3. In "Initiation" Levi tells how, late one evening, he is assigned a shared bunk. The next morning he joins the frantic communal run to the washroom. He concludes that the act of washing in filthy water without soap can serve no purpose. Steinlauf, a fellow prisoner, contradicts him by arguing that to survive—in order to bear witness—one must force oneself to save at least the outward form of civilisation.
  4. In the fourth chapter Levi's foot is injured while he is working and, after a cursory and humiliating examination, he is admitted to "Ka-Be", the Krankenbau or infirmary. Those unlikely to recover are selected to leave, including one of Levi's neighbours. Levi speculates that the man might be transferred to another camp; another neighbour observes that Levi 'does not want to understand'. It is a life of limbo. The physical discomforts are few, but with this comes a reawakening of memory and conscience and the realisation that no one is to be permitted to survive and report what man's audacity made of man in Auschwitz.
  5. After twenty days Levi is discharged from the infirmary. Luckily he is assigned to a barrack where his best friend Alberto lives, a man of great intelligence and intuition. In "Our Nights" Levi describes his recurring dream of being at home with loved ones, who do not listen as he recounts his experience of the camp. Alberto tells him it is a common dream. Levi describes the nightly procession to the bucket which serves as the latrine, the shapeless nightmares of violence and the shattering moment of reveille at the start of the new day.
  6. In "The Work" Levi is assigned a new bunkmate, Resnyk, who is notable for his kindness and consideration. Levi describes the working day. Resnyk agrees to pair himself with Levi and shoulders the greater part of the painful, backbreaking work. There is a brief respite in the middle of the day when the prisoners eat a bowl of watery soup in silence before falling into a brief sleep in the warmth of the shed. Ordered back to work, Resnyk says he would not chase his dog into this biting wind.
  7. In "A Good Day" the first day of sunshine gives the prisoners hope of spring. But as soon as they forget about the cold, they remember how hungry they are. They torment each other by describing long-ago meals. The discovery by the barrack's resident fixer of a 50-litre vat of soup temporarily removes that source of unhappiness. With their hunger assuaged, they can think of their mothers and wives, which they rarely allow themselves to do. For a few hours they are unhappy in the manner of free men.
  8. In "This Side of Good and Evil", Levi explains the camp's system of commerce. Since almost nothing is supplied by the Germans, not even a spoon to eat meals, anything can be bartered or stolen. Levi asks the reader to contemplate the meaning of the moralistic words "right" and "wrong", and "good" and "evil", on his side of the barbed wire in a world of desperate, half-starved prisoners.
  9. Levi likens the camp to a gigantic social experiment in "the conduct of the human animal in the struggle for life." He says that when people are pushed to the extreme, two categories emerge: "The Drowned and the Saved". Among the latter category, Levi expresses extra contempt for the camp's "Jewish prominents" who have plotted to gain a position of privilege, and curried favor with the Germans, by tyrannically ruling over the other Jewish prisoners.
  10. In "Chemistry Examination", Levi narrates the surreal experience of being marched to the camp's magnesium chloride warehouse with a chance to perhaps save himself by becoming a "Specialist". So weakened with hunger he can barely stand, he takes an oral chemistry examination, in German, from Doktor Pannwitz who coldly looks at the filthy, emaciated Levi like a specimen from a lower species. After the exam, Levi returns to his barracks with no inkling of what the future holds.
  11. In "The Canto of Ulysses" Levi is sent to fetch the daily soup with Jean, a young Alsatian prisoner. As they walk, Levi attempts to recall a passage from Dante’s Inferno, Ulysses’ final speech. The lines evoke a powerful sense of dignity and human striving, momentarily lifting Levi from the dehumanising reality of the camp. Jean listens attentively, and Levi senses a shared understanding. The passage becomes a rare moment of intellectual and emotional clarity, a fleeting rediscovery of culture and self-worth amid brutality. Levi forgets four triplets—but not the feeling. For a moment, he is a man again.
  12. By August 1944, Levi and his fellow prisoners are considered 'old hands'. In "The Events of the Summer", Levi describes how the camp is shaken by Allied bombings, disrupting the construction of the Buna factory and deepening the chaos. Hopes sparked by news of Normandy and the Russian advance quickly fade. The prisoners, exhausted and starving, work amid ruins, dust, and fear. Levi meets Lorenzo, an Italian civilian who quietly brings him bread and kindness for six months. In a world collapsing around them, Lorenzo’s daily gesture affirms Levi’s humanity. Amid destruction and despair, Levi begins to believe he has survived because someone once did good without reward.
  13. In "October 1944" the prisoners anticipate a 'selection': the Germans will send a proportion of the prisoners to the gas chambers to make room for new arrivals. No one knows the exact day on which it will take place; the prisoners reassure each other that surely it will not be they who will be selected. When it comes, the process is so perfunctory that it is almost a matter of chance who is chosen.
  14. In "Kraus" Levi recalls the Hungarian working alongside him who has not grasped that in the camp hard work is not rewarded; not wasting energy is more likely to lead to survival.
  15. Winter has arrived. "Die Drei Leute vom Labor" describes how Levi and two other prisoners are chosen to work in the laboratory. Its cleanliness and warmth contrasts with the rest of the bomb-ravaged and snow-covered camp. The presence of three healthy women makes the prisoners self-conscious about their own physical deterioration.
  16. In "The Last One" Levi describes the audacious schemes he and Alberto devise to acquire goods to exchange for bread. At the end of the day the prisoners are assembled to witness the hanging of a man who has taken part in an uprising. At the moment of death he cries out "Comrades, I am the last!" The prisoners look on passively, robbed by now of any autonomy.
  17. Written in the form of a diary "The Story of Ten Days" is the work's epilogue. Suffering with scarlet fever, Levi is admitted to the camp hospital. By now the arrival of the Red Army is imminent and the Germans decide to abandon the camp. Only the healthy prisoners are evacuated. Alberto leaves, Levi remains. The forced march of the departing prisoners will take almost all of them, including Alberto, to their deaths. Levi and two other prisoners set about helping the other patients in their barrack, scouring the abandoned camp for provisions. The Soviet troops arrive on 27 January 1945.

    Composition

Levi began to write in February 1946, with a draft of what would become the final chapter recording his most recent memories of Auschwitz. According to Ian Thomson, Levi worked over the next ten months with concentrated energy and extreme facility. Levi told him that the words poured out of him "like a flood which has been dammed and suddenly rushes forth". In the daytime Levi was working at a paint factory north-east of Turin. Mostly he wrote in the evenings and late into the night, although Levi said that the chapter "The Canto of Ulysses" was written almost entirely in a single, half-hour lunch break. The first manuscript was completed in December 1946 and required considerable editorial work. His future wife, Lucia Morpurgo, helped him to shape the book, giving it a clear sense of direction.