On 2010-03-02 Crystal Vaagen, Upper Midwest wrote: For historians who represent the past, and for authors such as Mr. Levi, the greatest fear about history is society forgetting integral parts of its existence. I won´t forget it. His story is significant so please read this book.
First, my words bow to the author with the deepest respect. ´Survival in Auschwitz,´ an autobiography, discusses the life of the author, a young prisoner in a Nazi death camp. Mr. Levi transports the reader into an incredible time, and places the reader- into his head- his thoughts and feelings and into the action of a death camp as one can feel, see, and smell every detail of what is occurring. His illustrations are vivid, scary, saddening, and most of all extremely detailed. He draws the sense of ´stagnant time´, the absurdity of unnecessary work for the sake of evilness, and how common morality wouldn´t survive this camp. `Survival logic´- a practical and methodical thinking means to survival is one lesson taken away from reading this book. One chapter, for example, discusses a person named Kraus, a hard worker, who on the `outside´ would be encouraged and praised by his ethic. But on the `inside´, there is a dark understanding through Levi´s logic, that `one can die from exhaustion but not from being beat.´ It struck me as to how survival rested upon the ability to see the problem clearly and adjust oneself based on- not what was socially `right,´ but what was needed for survival.
Additionally, there is an interview of Mr. Levi by an author named Mr. Roth. At first, I have to say, I wasn´t going to read it, and my exact thought was: ´Why does some fictional writer feel the need to ride the coattails of this author? It´s like taking a Monet painting and framing it with mascara smear. Let the masterpiece stand alone.´ I´m not trying to be mean when I state this, but I am trying to illustrate my frustration with a mixing of fiction and nonfiction. But I read it anyway because my hunger for what Mr. Levi stated overpowered any `fictional intolerance´. To be fair, while I found Mr. Roth a bright observer and most likely a good note taker, I did not like the interview questions. They are not questions I would have posed. Almost every interview question begins with the promotion of another book Primo Levi wrote, (which I liked to promote further reading,) but at the same time, I found the questions too systematic instead of visceral. It wasn´t ´how did you feel when..´ His questions stood very `bookish´ to me, reverting back to other literature, like comparing Robinson Crusoe to Mr. Levi, which bothered me.
Masterpieces are rare. This book stands above all literature on my shelf. If ever there was an autobiography to get your hands on, this one is definitely IT!
. And summed up by saying Best historical autobiography I have ever read. Currently Survival In Auschwitz has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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Touchstone claimed In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and ´Italian citizen of Jewish race,´ was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi´s classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remains a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit. Included in this new edition is an illuminating conversation between Philip Roth and Primo Levi never before published in book form.
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