While working in Switzerland allowed him to escape the race laws, Levi realized the project was doomed to fail. All Rights Reserved.

Translated into nearly 40 languages, If This Is a Man (also known as Survival in Auschwitz) endures today. As Alvin H. Rosenfeld, renowned scholar of Jewish literature and Holocaust studies, so aptly wrote, “Levi was able to evoke [Auschwitz’s] madness, cruelty, and near-incomprehensibility with compelling clarity.”. The Complete Works of Primo Levi gives worthy attention to this great writer’s work, rather than his death. are anchored by his words each time one of them steps foot into the exhibition. Literary symbolism is almost unavoidably assigned to his death. While most of the remaining prisoners died along the way, the treatment Levi had received while hospitalized helped him survive until the SS surrendered the prisoners to the Soviet Army.

His progressive Jewish family was headed by his father, Cesare, a factory worker, and his self-educated mother Ester, an avid reader and pianist. Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian chemist deported to Auschwitz in February 1944 after being captured during activities as a partisan. Though irreligious, he admitted to this ‘crime’ instead of his true ‘offense’ to avoid immediate death. After the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz in 1945, Levi returned to Turin. Using the words that Levi provides us and the opportunities from Centro Primo Levi and the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust to share those words in all kinds of languages is the key to ensuring that Auschwitz never has the chance to happen again. Not far away.

Though it may not have translated fully into the author’s living reality, Levi’s enduring strength and hope can be read throughout The Complete Works, emphasizing life over death in his writing. In what would become a life-long collaboration, Levi, assisted by Lucia, began writing poetry and stories about his experiences in Auschwitz. When Germany occupied northern and central Italy in September 1943 and installed fascist Benito Mussolini as head of the Italian Social Republic, Levi returned to Turin only to find his mother and sister hiding in the hills outside the city.

In a 1963 sequel, “The Truce,” he details his experiences on his long, difficult journey back to his home in Turin after his liberation from Auschwitz. That Levi’s work could be read in 25 languages in New York City illuminates how his words and stories transcend the particulars of their unimaginable time and place, achieving the darkest kind of universality. Before the Second World War he was fully trained as an industrial chemist, but as a Jewish man, he would be marked by the horrors of the Second World War.

He was 67 years old. Born in 1919—one hundred years ago—in Turin, Italy, Levi worked as a chemist before his arrest and deportation to Auschwitz in 1943. Levi's mother, Ester, known to everyone as Rina, was well educated, having attended the Istituto Maria Letizia. He survived Auschwitz and, in 1947, published an account of his experiences. She too was an avid reader, played the piano, and spoke fluent French. As a child, he was frail and sickly, and was mocked for his small frame and timid disposition. On April 11, 1987, Levi fell from the landing of his third-story apartment in Turin and died shortly thereafter. His work at the big consumer conglomeration SIVA felt like a trap he could not escape due to financial pressures. He has admitted that he was tempted to pray before the decision to send him to the gas chambers was made, but he refrained as he believed ‘The rules of the game don’t change when it’s about to end, or when you’re losing.’ The very first words written in If This Is A Man are ‘It was my good fortune.’ Many instances occurred in line with this claim.

Armed with his scientific brain, Levi notes that he ‘almost never had time to devote to death’ and instead concentrated on the immediate problems obstructing survival, writing: ‘The business of living is the best defense against death, and not only in the camps.’, Levi maintains that his survival was largely based on sheer chance. In 1941, he graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from the University of Turin. Levi did all of this in 1947 when his volume was published; the event’s readers brought this to life again in 2019; and the thousands upon thousands of visitors to Auschwitz. He believed his survival was not heroic, but signaled the emergence of Darwinian instincts which are usually hidden beneath the pretense of civilian life, and that the dead and forgotten prisoners should be revered instead of him. (Primo Levi, 1986). His classic book “The Periodic Table” was named the best science book … His classic book “The Periodic Table” was named the best science book ever written by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In mid-June, Centro Primo Levi in New York along with the Italian Cultural Institute and the New York Public Library hosted an eight-hour, full-length recitation of Levi’s If This Is A Man in twenty-five languages. © 2020 Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Of the 650 people on his transport, only 96 were not sent to the gas chambers immediately on arrival: of the 96 registered in the camp, only three survived.

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His experiences in Auschwitz and on his 10-month struggle to return to Turin would consume Levi and shape the rest of his life. Edmond J. Safra Plaza36 Battery PlaceNew York, NY 10280. Furthermore, his contraction of scarlet fever occurred at an opportune time, and he was not led on the infamous ‘death march.’.

Though in confinement, Levi was safe as long as Fossoli remained under Italian rather than German control. Sign up with your email to receive news, updates and exclusive event invitations from the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Born in 1919—one hundred years ago—in Turin, Italy, Levi worked as a chemist before his arrest and deportation to Auschwitz in 1943. It is Levi’s ability to make sense of the senseless, to translate the unthinkable that serves as an anchor for me – and anyone, really – in seeking to understand Auschwitz. He survived Auschwitz and, in 1947, published an account of his experiences. Knowing that the nickel would be used by Germany to produce armaments, he left the San Vittore mines in June 1942, taking a job in a Swiss company working on an experimental project extracting anti-diabetic drugs from vegetable matter.

These words anchor the exhibition Auschwitz. As an educational institution of memory, hope, and resilience, our mission has never been more relevant. 254 The reasons for his death have been contested. Despite being a social introvert, Levi was dedicated to his education.

Museum of Jewish Heritage Holocaust Curriculum, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Perhaps the inability to recover his full humanity after Auschwitz led to his — alleged — suicide at the age of 67 on April 11, 1987, despite his conscious effort to focus on life. Primo Michele Levi was born on July 31, 1919, in Turin, Italy. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. The marriage between Rina and Cesare had been arra… Strangely, he only felt true freedom during his nine-month journey home from Poland (this ‘unlimited openness’ was documented in his novel, The Truce), away from the constraints of the life which would ensue. However, Levi suffered from intense survivor’s guilt. In 1946, aged just 27, not long after he was released from Auschwitz, he completed his most famous novel, If This Is A Man; remarkably, it was turned down by six publishers.

Translated into nearly 40 languages, If This Is a Man (also known as Survival in Auschwitz) endures today. He recalls, in If This Is a Man, the first time when he became aware “that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man.” Perhaps, just as his training as a chemist allowed Levi to survive Auschwitz, his instincts as a writer allowed him to grapple philosophically with it.

388 His life story, as well as his individual novels’ plots, can be read as the hopeful story of a man who survives inconceivable trauma by finding purpose and contentedness thereafter. As the Soviet Army approached, the Nazi SS forced all but the gravely ill prisoners on a death march to another prison camp still under German control. Sitting and taking in the English words on a screen while listening to impassioned, compelling readers recite Levi’s lines in languages from Albanian to French, from Russian to Korean, the resonance of Levi’s words, messages, and his breathtaking account of life in Auschwitz was clear to me – even as I did not understand most of the languages I was listening to.
The quote above is the first line visitors read when they enter the gallery. The Drowned and the Saved explores this moral complexity — ‘the gray zone’ — of Auschwitz. Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor. For example, it so happened that he was 24 when he was arrested, and as a young man, he was useful to the Nazis and survived the first possible round of gas chambers. When fascists infiltrated the group, Levi was arrested and sent to a labor camp near Modena, Italy, and later transferred to Auschwitz, where he worked as a slave laborer for 11 months. Levi’s determination to survive Auschwitz is in his novel The Drowned And The Saved, published in 1986.