In the garden of the Devil

Primo Levi was an Italian Jew arrested in 1943 from a resilient network. German deported to Auschwitz, he escaped extermination to land at Monowitz Lager, entirely devoted to the construction of a rubber plant, the Buna. He stayed there for almost a year until the camp was liberated by Russian troops from the east. Having started reporting his experiences in a journal before the end of his detention, Levi splint it with even more serious when the Allies ask him a technical report on the operation of Auschwitz. Thus, two years later, in an edition to almost confidential distribution (copies 2500), the book If This is a Man was born. Before knowing the success and fame in the 60s, when people begin to accept the past existence of the Holocaust, Levi tells the complete and utter horror, Hell on Earth used by the Germans to destroy the Jews ... and the man simply.

Survival In Auschwitz remains an outlier in the books on the Holocaust. Primo Levi is not a novel or an essay, but a testimony. He also specify again in the appendices to the end of work. Everything begins with the arrest of Levi in ​​Italy and ends at the moment when the Russians enter the Monowitz camp. No preamble to introduce things, no epilogue either. In fact, the author wanted to deliver a narrative closest possible to the truth that he has lived without adding to considerations other atrocities he has not seen from his eyes as crematoria and gas chambers. In fact, her journey, not quite linear, not intended a hard dive into the machine to destroy Nazi. Without setting too broad goals, Levi gets to do a lot more than he had set.

The horror in Survival In Auschwitz occurs gradually but constantly senfoncer in the depths of inhumanity and degradation. Gradually, the reader experiences the outright dehumanization. Levi does nothing to inspire or other twists of suspense that would be found elsewhere, he describes his journey and encounters. These are indeed fascinating, not just by the personalities he met in the camp but by analyzing it in fact cold, detached, almost clinical. Those are the Jews who are at the forefront of the story, even if we sometimes will cross political prisoners, and Levi will continue to describe his fellow without hatred, without love. In If This is a Man, Levi, surprisingly, did not show any hatred toward others, even to the Nazis, and the author does not deviate from this course of action, producing a surprising narrative possible.

In fact, Levi wants to do one thing above all, this is describing the camp itself. Not just its layout and its use but its effect. This is where the Italian gets the most success. In Auschwitz, everything has been designed and created to debase man. The distribution of tasks and their performances in the infirmary through the Call, absolutely everything is a cog in an infernal machine. Humiliation, mechanical violence and the constant reminder of the condition of prisoners develop a sense of abandonment and quite incredible indescribable. More text advance and you get used to the hardships endured and the absurd logic of operation, including the black market necessary for life. Auschwitz proves the ultimate weapon for the destruction of men who are reduced to less than beasts. Fear, ubiquitous, crushes everything. Every act, every encounter awakens and Levi transmits a heavy atmosphere where every day is a fight for sheer survival.

Thus, Levi also reflects the incredible will that we demonstrated the prisoners to survive day to day. How desire to live in such a place and in such a condition? It is the continual question asked the author. To tell. This is the loophole that some found as Primo himself. For others, it is simply the fierce flame of resistance, an irrepressible desire to want to exist. Never pay in self pity, Levi recounts desperation like no other. This wall of silence hangs over the beginning to the end reader even when the Germans leave the camp, ten days of abandonment of the survivors seem endless. But what especially spring Survival In Auschwitz is that nothing could justify the survival of this or that person. Camp extreme survival conditions had no logical solution and the confession of the author himself, the lives of each other were up to chance, to chance. No God here, on the contrary. For Levi, Auschwitz remains the most remote place of God, there ... just think how that God exists if such a place could be born someday? Levi shows the garden of the Devil, except that the point dAntéchrist just man, terrible and despicable.

Survival In Auschwitz has often been described as the most important book of the past century view of history altogether. After reading it, one thing is certain, read Survival In Auschwitz. To remember and to remain alert to fascism lurking, political or religious.
The testimony of Primo Levi is emerging as the most vital work that may exist, more fundamental than the Bible or any other sacred book, direct evidence of human abjection but also a warning, terrible and timeless.

"Let us beware of all the prophets; it is better to renounce revealed truths, even if they transport us with their simplicity and brilliance, even if we find them convenient because the gratis a Better be content. Other more modest and less exciting truths, those which are laboriously conquers, progressively and without leapfrogging through study, discussion and reasoning, and that can be verified and demonstrated. "