= If_This_Is_a

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= If_This_Is_a_Man =
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Introduction
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'If This Is a Man' ( ; United States title: 'Survival in Auschwitz')
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 (Monowitz) from February 1944 until the
camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.

Background
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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
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#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 (a name which means nothing to
them). 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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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 (strips of one's shirt, one's gold teeth,
etc.) 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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#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.
#Winter has arrived. "Die Drei Leute vom Labor" ("The Three Laboratory
People") 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.
#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.
#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
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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.

Publication
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In January 1947, the manuscript was initially rejected by Einaudi,
with the writers Cesare Pavese and Natalia Ginzburg thinking it too
early after the war for such an account. However Levi managed to find
a smaller publisher, De Silva, who published the book on 11 October
1947. They printed 2,500 copies of the book, 1,500 of which were sold,
mostly in Levi's hometown of Turin. Prior to this, however, five
excerpts had been serialised, under its then title 'Sul fondo' ('in
the Abyss') in a Turin Communist newspaper 'The People's Friend',
between 29 March and 31 May 1947. In 1955, Levi signed a contract with
Einaudi for a new edition, which was published in 1958. The initial
printing of 2000 copies was followed by a second of the same size.

An English translation by Stuart Woolf was published in 1959. A German
translation by Heinz Reidt appeared in 1961 (titled 'Ist das ein
Mensch?') and a French edition in the same year.

All translations were completed under Levi's close supervision. He was
particularly careful to oversee the German translation, writing in
'The Drowned and the Saved': "I did not trust my German publisher. I
wrote him an almost insolent letter: I warned him not to remove or
change a single word in the text, and I insisted that he send me the
manuscript of the translation in batches ... I wanted to check on not
merely its lexical but also its inner faithfulness." Robert S. C.
Gordon writes that Levi went on to develop a close relationship with
Reidt. The German edition contains a special preface addressed to the
German people, which Levi said he wrote out of passionate necessity to
remind them what they had done.

'If This Is a Man' is often published alongside Levi's second work of
witness, 'The Truce' (Italian title: 'La Tregua'). The English
translation of that book was published in 1965, again by Stuart Woolf,
and was awarded the John Florio Prize for Italian translation in 1966.

Invocation
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The book is introduced by a poem. The construction "If ..." invites
the reader to make a judgment. It alludes to the treatment of people
as 'Untermenschen' (German for "sub-humans"), and to Levi's
examination of the degree to which it was possible for a prisoner in
Auschwitz to retain his or her humanity. The poem explains the title
and sets the theme of the book: humanity in the midst of inhumanity.

The last part of the poem, beginning 'meditate', explains Levi's
purpose in having written it: to record what happened so that later
generations will "ponder" (a more literal translation of 'meditare')
the significance of the events he lived through. It also parallels the
language of the 'V'ahavta', the Jewish prayer that commands followers
to remember and pass on the teachings of their faith.

Style
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The calm sobriety of Levi's prose style is all the more striking given
the horrific nature of the events he describes. Levi explained in his
1976 Appendix to the work: "I thought that my word would be more
credible and useful the more objective it appeared and the less
impassioned it sounded; only in that way does the witness in court
fulfil his function, which is to prepare the ground for the judge. It
is you who are the judges."

He ascribed the clarity of his language to the habits acquired during
his training as a chemist: "My model was that of the weekly reports, a
normal practice in factories: they must be concise, precise and
written in a language accessible to all levels of the firm's
hierarchy."

Adaptations
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In 1965 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired the 140-minute
dramatic feature,
[http://georgewhalley.ca/gwp/sites/all/files/If_This_Is_A_Man.pdf "If
This is a Man"], George Whalley's adaptation of Stuart Woolf's
translation. The broadcast was produced by John Reeves, who has
[http://georgewhalley.ca/gwp/node/5050 written about the radio
production].

In 2004 the National Theatre in London presented a stage version of
the book under the title 'Primo'. It was adapted and performed by
Anthony Sher and directed by Richard Wilson. In 2005 the production
was filmed for broadcast by the BBC and HBO.

See also
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*'Le Monde''s 100 Books of the Century
*'Night (memoir)'
*'The Diary of a Young Girl'
*The Holocaust in the arts and popular culture

Sources
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*Benchouiha, Lucie (2006). 'Primo Levi: Rewriting the Holocaust'.
Troubador Publishing Ltd.
*Gordon, Robert S. C. (2007). 'The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi'.
Cambridge University Press.
*Levi, Primo (2015). 'The Complete Works of Primo Levi'. Penguin
Classics.
*Thomson, Ian (2003). 'Primo Levi: A Biography'. Vintage.

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