Holocaust literature is all a reader needs to confirm his belief that existence is pointless, meaningless, cruel, and short. However, Primo Levi tried to raise a smile in spite of that fact in this collection of fifteen terse tales of notable moments of compassion, novelty, humanity, or noteworthiness at Auschwitz. In these elegant stories, Levi keeps the surrounding horrors outside the frame, and sketches various characters whose subversive courage and whose canniness kept them and others alive, including Levi himself. At some stage, I might swallow several vodkas and embark on If This is a Man. Until then, I will take these brief moments of reprieve.

Emotionally taut. Simple yet disarming

Excellent companion book to Survival in Auschwitz. It contains many short stories that recall moments during his imprisonment when Levi either met people or had experiences that allowed him to forget the intense pressures of his situation. He occasionally caught glimpses of the humanity and caring exhibited by some who were afraid to express their distaste for their work as officers or employees of the camp, and those accounts he gives us here.

Wonderful book that makes you appreciate how superficial and trivial the worries of everyday life can be.

"Haunting" is a word too readily given to any work even tangentially related to the Holocaust. Primo Levi's Moments of Reprieve is indeed that, but so much more besides. Levi's work is a rare feat of tonal balance and perfect resonance. It's wonderful storytelling that tells of its atrocious subject matter with a detachment and investment that only an actual survivor can manage. It avoids the saccharine bill-boarding of Spielberg's Schindler's List (overrated, sorry) and chooses a different side then, say, Jerzy Kosinksi's The Painted Bird (brilliant but almost debilitating in its savage evisceration of the human animal) opting instead to detail the sparse but very real moments of emotional cognizance that imply a shared humanity between oppressor and oppressed. And all of this in under 150 pages.

I don't have much else to add save that even for a brief work this is one to take slowly. Genocide, and the Jewish Holocaust specifically, are not subjects (for me at least) to dive in and consume. I have to pace myself and, in the words of Amos Oz, take little sips. But overall it's a consummate work of a brilliant mind resistant to the lugubrious decay that the subject matter so often dredges up. Levi was a gift, I see that now, and look forward to his words with great expectation but with more than a little trepidation given how well he writes of the horror of Nazi Germany. But this is buoyed more than slightly by his artistic and philosophic bent that can make even the darkest hours shine more than they might otherwise.

These are short stories by Primo Levi, recalling people and events from the Holocaust, mostly from Auschwitz, or at least in Nazi-occupied Europe.
I feel it is inappropriate to calmly write a book review, when the only fitting response for a reader on holiday in beautiful Wales, overlooking the sea, is not to write a review, but to weep; or at least to remember and vow never, never to forget.

It's hard to imagine that stories about Auschwitz can restore your faith in humanity, but somehow, in amidst evil and horror, these moments often do.

Good short book. Likely I should have not started with this as a first exposure to Levi’s writing. Stories were interesting and had a haunting feeling to them when knowing what happens at the camps. Would read more from this author.

I read the Ann Goldstein translation, which is named "Present Perfect" in Lilith and Other Stories, the Complete Works, Vol II.

The last of these essays, "The King of the Jews" (in Moments of Reprieve, it is named "Story of a Coin") ought to be read more widely.

Hearing his voice, there was ash on my tongue, winter lived in my bones

Primo Levi’s life was saved by these things



He was a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz but he was working as a chemist in the laboratory attached to the huge chemical plant there. (They didn't pay him very well. In fact, they didn't pay him at all.) In January 1945 he was looking around for something, anything, he could steal from the lab to trade for bread. Like all other prisoners, he was starving. He saw a dozen pipettes. He had no idea if anyone would trade for them but what the hell. He went to see a Polish male nurse who worked in the infirmary. Although most prisoners in Auschwitz were killed, still many were kept alive to do essential work, so there was an infirmary. The male nurse wasn’t much interested in the pipettes but what the hell, they might come in useful. But it was late in the day, there was no bread left. So he offered half a bowl of soup.

Who could have left half a bowl of soup in that reign of hunger? Almost certainly someone who had died half way through the meal.

Primo takes the soup back to his barracks and shares it with his friend Alberto. The two Italian Jews discuss whether they can risk eating the soup. The person who’s soup this was had most likely died a couple of hours ago of scarlet fever, which was at the time the Auschwitz disease of the week. That would be why someone else hadn't already eaten it. It was infected, probably. Alberto wasn’t bothered, he’d had scarlet fever as a child, but Primo hadn’t. But the starving tend to bend the rules on such matters so Primo ate the soup too. And a couple of days later he got scarlet fever. So a week later, when the order came to destroy Auschwitz and move all prisoners back into Germany, Primo was in the infirmary. Now, the order was to liquidate all prisoners who couldn’t walk, but in the chaos of the last days of Auschwitz this order was overlooked or ignored – well, those in the infirmary, they’ll all be dead soon, let’s not waste bullets on them. Something like that. On the 18th January 1945 the SS herded about 60,000 prisoners out of the camp on one of the famous Death Marches. One of them was Alberto. Hardly any of them survived. On the 25th January the Red Army entered Auschwitz, and Primo, who had managed not to die in the preceding week, was rescued. Because of the pipettes.

Short chapters with vignettes of life at and after Auschwitz, told by an Italian survivor. Much more detached and clinical than Elie Wiesel, but moving in its own way.