Primo Levi: The Survivor And His Work

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IT2304: Primo Levi: the Survivor and his Work

Essay Title: “È compito dell’uomo giusto fare guerra ad ogni privilegio non meritato, ma non si deve dimenticare che questa è una guerra senza fine”.
[I sommersi e i salvati, Page 29] Discuss why the theme of priviledge is so significant in Se questo è un uomo and I sommersi e i salvati. Lecturer:

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Word Count: 2,928

Primo Levi was a young chemist from Turin. At the end of the year of 1943 he was captured by the Germans and sent to a detention camp at Fossoli. On the 21st of February 1944 everyone in Fossoli were told they were departing to an unknown location: Auschwitz.650 people were taken and transported in goods
It was winter time when it was announced that he and two other comrades would be indoors in their very own laboratory, this was a huge privilege as working outside for the winter months often resulted in death for many due to the tretaiosnu conditions that had to be endured .It is underlined and emphasized for the duration of this novel that every aspect of the Lager was a condition that was an advantage or a disadvantage, life or death. Once the summer months ended and winter struck ‘from the months of October till April, seven out of ten of us will die. Whoever dose not die will suffer minute by minute, all day, every day:’8 It is all of these small aspects which one would not even consider in your everyday normal life but in the Lager the Germans had created an environment designed so that every minute every number were struggling and fighting for their lives. Thus each prisoner whom obtained an extra quarter ration of bread or extra button were considered privileged as it may have just save their lives, at least for a day longer. ‘We the survivors, are not the true witnesses’9 these words held conviction throughout ‘the drowned and saved’, those who were vanquished from this earth were the ones whom
“The room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero”, if someone wanted to survive and gain access to an alternative position and leverage they had to become robotized and strive against what was right and wrong, good or evil. Primo elaborates on this sense of shame having survived the holocaust above the “true witnesses” and how one had to abandon their opinions and do what they had to to live, survival of the fitness in one sense. Levi describes how one had to fight against their own strength and soul, and that it was not only the German soldiers who were the enemy in the concentration camp but everyone. It was a case of everyman for himself. To conclude, throughout these novels primo, being a trained chemist, analyses and scrutinises in detail the experience of the concentration camps and what people were capable of in order to survive. Primo has never got his tattoo of his number removed and is not ashamed of what he experienced. He was a survivor of the holocaust against all odds and one should bare the utmost respect for this, he was priviledged. It is speculated that Primo committed suicide due to the fact that he could no longer live with the shame and guilt of having survived the holocaust, above all others. He could not live with the continuous inner turmoil of what he had done to surrender to gain such privileges to survive in the camps thus abandoning all