Summary: ‘Survival in Auschwitz: If this is a man’
Summary: If this is a man (1976)
If this is a man, he recounts the experience of Primo Levi within the Nazi concentration camps in Germany. Throughout the text, he tells very in detail how he was captured and transferred by the fascists (being Levi a member of the opposition), and how his life was transformed into the extermination field, a place that is known Like Lager. First, Levi tells how the captured Jews were separated between useful and useless, the latter being destined for gas chambers for their immediate extermination. Thus, those who were not exterminated were forced to fulfill in work that would be useful for the lager, being a member of them.
Subsequently, the author comments on the bloody deals he received from the Germans, who used torture, humiliation and depersonalization methods against the captured Jews. Among these methods, they were: deny access to water, shave them and undress them, and tattoo in each of their left arms, their identification number, which made them häftlings. The combination of such factors caused Levi to describe his situation as being in the background, which is the most vile and deplorable state that the human being can experience. Throughout the text, Levi shows his concern that others do not come to believe what he is narrating.
Throughout the chapters of the book, Levi describes how the hard months were lived inside the lager. The author tells how he was forced to perform forced labor with large steel blocks, until an accident with one of them left him legitimately injured to continue with such work, so he was transferred to the infirmary. In the nursing, Levi could rest a little (and survive the winter), and observed that those who could no longer recover from their wounds were exterminated by the German fascists.
After the hard winter, the warm spring arrived, and the author mentions the growing problem of famine, which had just intensified due to the time of the year. Simultaneously, Levi explains life within the concentration camp, where prisoners were still people with dreams, such as eating well or reunitting with his family.
Primo Levi, dedicates part of the chapters of the book to explain the life and situations of other colleagues in the concentration camp, in which aspects about the integrity of the prisoners are detailed, to which he cataloged among the sunk (the most depersonalized ), and the saved (who still had some personality).
Some time later, Levi would be presented with an opportunity to work in a Lager chemical laboratory, an opportunity he accepted. While in the laboratory, he would avoid part of the previous physical works. Then, in October 1944, a selection was made on who had to be exterminated, to give way to the new members, Levi and his friend Alberto survived. In the end, Levi tells his experience in the infirmary, because he suffered from scarlet fever, and tells how thanks to it, he avoided his death as that of most prisoners who were evacuated by Hitler’s orders. After the Soviet intervention, the author managed to survive and decided to publish his traumatic experiences. Years later, Levi would publish his trilogy of his books, of which this is the first of them.
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