I would not be shy in saying that I would rate "If This Is A Man" (a.k.a. "Survival in Auschwitz") as one of the most important books of the 20th Century. Part of this is pragmatic, because it sometimes feels like, if it is given such a status, we might stop it becoming an unheeded warning for the 21st and onward.

Primo Levi relates his experience of the Holocaust, humbly (and, it seems, almost perplexedly) surviving Auschwitz. Actually, it might be better to say that he was reborn after Auschwitz, as Levi's scientifically clear recounting (a chemist himself) - like a clear witness-statement - is quite firm in its premise of the destruction of a Man (even before the German "death machine"killed their bodies, the camps killed everything else that it was to be Man.


If This Is A Man

    You who live safe
    In your warm houses;
    You who find on returning in the evening
    Hot food and friendly faces:

    Consider if this is a man
    Who works in the mud
    Who knows no peace
    Who fights for a bit of bread
    Who dies because of a yes and because of a no

    Consider if this is a woman,
    Without hair and without name
    Without enough strength to remember
    Vacant eyes and cold womb
    Like a frog in the winter:

    Reflect on the fact that this has happened:
    These words I commend to you:
    Inscribe them on your heart
    When staying at home and going out,

    Going to bed and rising up;
    Repeat them to your children:
    Or may your house fall down,
    Illness bar your way,
    Your loved ones turn away from you.


This is Primo Levi's poem that appears at the start of the book. Subsequently, the awful horror that is related (without ever really relating the physical, gruesome type of "horror" our eyes come to expect from the news) begins to grind the reality of the Holocaust into your bones and into the marrow. This is probably the hardest book I've ever read, and by that I also mean it feels like completely, utterly, compulsory reading for everyone. Primo isn't extravagantly painting pictures of the pain and terror, but simply, succinctly, relates his experiences. He doesn't recount his "survival" in any sense of victory or triumph, but simply as a lucky confluence of final events. He is writing to bear witness to what happened and what he saw and what he felt (or didn't). The destruction of what it is to be a Man, the efficient and "professional" brutalisation and eradication of the human spirit, the arrogant certainty of a disdainful and industrial production-line to remove all hope, the total despair that this engenders, is only exceeded (and is an overwhelming shadow over the book, through its limited mention) by its worse presence in the ruthless killing of so many people in the Holocaust.

I am rarely moved to tell anyone and everyone to read a particular book, generally aiming the type of book to my estimation of what the people I know might like. Primo Levi's "If This Is A Man" is one book I encourage everyone to read. It is not easy - but it is dreadfully important.

This book sometimes also includes "The Truce", which relates the terribly complicated journey Primo Levi had getting back to his home in Italy. It is a different book, that runs a line of hope intertwined with a subtly-growing suggestion relating to "the truce". It is also recommended, but expect a difference. It feels chaotic, as it only can while relating the chaos of much of Europe after the war was over.

I will leave you with another Primo Levi poem, also from the book...


Reveille
        
       In the brutal nights we used to dream
Dense violent dreams,
Dreamed with soul and body:
To return; to eat; to tell the story.
Until the dawn command
Sounded brief, low
'Wstawac'
And the heart cracked in the breast.

Now we have found our homes again,
Our bellies are full,
We're through telling the story.
It's time. Soon we'll hear again
The strange command:
'Wstawac'


Claw