Não vou classificar este livro.
É um testemunho real, cruel e devastador, logo não tem classificação possível.
Recomendo todas as pessoas a lerem este testemunho, não só para saber um pouco mais do quotidiano nos
campos de concentração, mas sobretudo saber um pouco mais sobre a condição humana.
É realmente deprimente saber o que um ser humano consegue fazer quando cego por algo, credo ou ideia, a pura maldade humana.
Também e não menos deprimente é a transformação dos seres civilizados e livres em animais grotescos e sem princípios capazes do impensável, quando privados das suas necessidades básicas.
Não há comparação possível, mas mesmo assim se olharmos com alguma atenção o mundo, por vezes basta o nosso pequeno "mundinho" podemos ver/perceber pequenos resquícios desses sentimentos mas em mínima escala.

"You who live safe in your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening, hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman, without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold like a frog in winter."

If This Is a Man starts with this poem. It is a fitting prelude to the book, for it details the harrowing personal experience of the author, Primo Levi, in the concentration camp of Buna-Monowitz. Levi calls the camp an "extermination camp". "Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself...It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term ‘extermination camp’..."

If This Is a Man recounts the period from Levi's capture by the Germans to the time of their liberation by the Red Army. With an impassive voice, he narrates his transport to the concentration camp, his hellish life in the camp, the humiliation, the degradation, and the suffering he had to endure there. Although he is a victim of unjust hatred, Levi maintains a balanced account of his life in the camp. He is justly indignant but not bitter. Yet, it's a powerful account written with tragic beauty. Even with Levi's impassive tone, the account distresses and emotionally taxes the readers.

The history tells us of the Holocaust - the genocide of over six million European Jews - but it fails to emphasize the equally heinous crime of the subtle murder of personalities, for that's what happened in these concentration camps. Nazis killed the personalities of their victims way before they killed their persons. Levi's narrative unfolds how their personalities were destroyed like that of breaking horses. "To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgement...That man must have been tough, he must have been made of another mettle than us if this condition of ours, which has broken us, could not bend him. Because we also are broken, conquered: even if we know how to adapt ourselves, even if we have finally learnt how to find our food and to resist the fatigue and cold, even if we return home...". My heart broke at these words.

Even after the liberation, Levi and the few Auschwitz survivors didn't have an easy time. The war had wrecked Europe. Everywhere there was damage, destruction, and disorder. So the journey back home was another trial for them. The second book The Truce recounts this trying time. To Levi, however, the journey home was a time for reflection and adjustment, for though they were free, they were still yoked to an invisible hell that lived through their thoughts and memories. "A dream full of horror has still not ceased to visit me, at sometimes frequent, sometimes longer, intervals. It is a dream within a dream, varied in detail, one in substance. I am sitting at a table with my family, or with friends, or at work, or in the green countryside; in short, in a peaceful relaxed environment, apparently without tension or affliction; yet I feel a deep and subtle anguish, the definite sensation, of an impending threat. And in fact, as the dream proceeds, slowly or brutally, each time in a different way, everything collapses and disintegrates around me, the scenery, the walls, the people, while the anguish becomes more intense and more precise. Now everything has changed to chaos; I am alone in the centre of a grey and turbid nothing, and now, I know what this thing means, and I also know that I have always known it; I am in the Lager once more, and nothing is true outside the Lager. All the rest was a brief pause, a deception of the senses, a dream; my family, nature in flower, my home." One cannot even imagine the weight of the scars these survivors carried. They were never truly free from their horrific experience. And what retribution could avenge the monstrous crimes committed against them? "Now nothing could ever happen good and pure enough to rub out our past, and that the scars of the outrage would remain within us for ever...It is foolish to think that human justice can eradicate it."


Levi's need to tell his story was urgent. While passing a part of German soil on his journey back home, he strongly felt the need to tell his story to the Germans. "We felt we had something to say, enormous things to say, to every single German, and we felt that every German should have something to say to us; we felt an urgent need to settle our accounts, to ask, explain and comment, like chess players at the end of a game. Did ‘they’ know about Auschwitz, about the silent daily massacre, a step away from their doors? If they did, how could they walk about, return home and look at their children, cross the threshold of a church? If they did not, they ought, as a sacred duty, to listen, to learn everything, immediately, from us, from me; I felt the tattooed number on my arm burning like a sore." There was yet another reason for Levi to chronicle his Auschwitz experience. "The danger, as time goes by, is that we will tire of hearing about the Holocaust, grow not only weary but disbelieving, and that out of fatigue and ignorance more than cynicism, we will belittle and by stages finally deny – actively or by default – the horror of the extermination camps and the witness, by then so many fading memories, of those who experienced them. The obligation to remember is inscribed on every Holocaust memorial, but even the words ‘Never Forget’ become irksome eventually." I fully comprehend Levi's reasoning. Knowing full well that concentration camps existed and having visited Auschwitz, some of the accounts still felt too fantastic even to me. As Levi says, there is the danger of disbelieving. Not yet but in the future. By writing these two books, Levi is not only giving voice to the Holocaust survivors but also performing a historical duty.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

I read this book as an undergraduate in 1992, and in those days had the luxury of suiting myself timewise... I started in the morning and read through the day: I don't think I moved from my sagging armchair until it was too dark to read, and I had to get another loo roll for soaking up the copious weeping.

Nearly twenty years on, the narrative still haunts me: it's every bit as breathtaking in translation as in the original, which is truly rare. This is a desert island book that I would never leave home without: a manual for humanity and a study in hope. Without compare.

To say it is a "must read" is an understatement. I cannot think of what to say that has not been said before, but then I feel I should say something that would entice others to read it. Dr. Levi writes of atrocious facts with such moderation, fact based (his personal experience, what he witnessed) and at the same time with such profoundness, humanity and deep-rooted pain. It does not help, as nothing would, explain the whys and wherefores of that blackest of black periods in human history that is the Holocaust. Please read it.

Неизбежен е паралелът с Ремарк. "Нима това е човек" и "Примирието" са като "Искрица живот" и "Обратният път" при Ремарк. Но още по-добри. Много по-добри. И брутални със своята автентичност. Примо Леви е великолепен разказвач!

Probably the best work about the Holocaust I have ever read. Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian, was captured while involved with a Resistance movement in 1944, and sent to Auschwitz. He was assigned to the work camp at Monowitz, and in If This is a Man he documents the brutality of the camp and the gradual dehumanisation of its occupants through cold, hunger, fatigue and its inhumane regime. In its companion volume, The Truce, Levi takes the reader with him on the bizarre and confused return journey to Italy.

Levi deliberately writes in a measured unsentimental way. He states his aim in the invaluable appendix to this edition “the calm sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge” This is far more effective in conveying the atmosphere of the camp than the sentimental and emotional tone so often used in modern Holocaust fiction, and provides a chilling and haunting account of this unimaginable cruelty and deprivation.

If This is a Man is an important and eye opening account, but difficult to read, particularly the final 10 days of the camp as detailed in the final chapter. The Nazis have fled, taking healthy occupants on a final death march, while Levi and his few healthy companions are scrabbling for survival in these hellish conditions amidst sick and dying people, filth and extreme cold. The Truce is a more uplifting work, full of mischievous humour. Despite the chaos of the journey from Poland to Italy, via Russia, the bunch of lively characters find ways to eat, drink and even occasionally be merry (there is a very funny account of a theatrical production in a Russian camp).

Definitely worth reading, and heeding the warning of someone who knew exactly what charismatic leaders followed by an adoring and unthinking populace can easily lead to.

A review of this dyad is not possible, at least not from me. Five stars are not enough. Read it and weep. Quite possibly the best book I have ever read.

Here is one of the most important books I have ever read. Philip Roth called Primo Levi “a magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I’ve ever known”. Roth, as many others, including myself, truly admired the strength and composure Primo Levi possessed to write his recollections of his time being a prisoner at Auschwitz. Although he lived in hell, meters away from gas chambers, and witnessed a growing decay of humanity, Primo Levi never reduced to hatred. On this particular matter he says:”I believe in reason and in discussion as supreme instruments of progress, and therefore I repress hatred even within myself: I prefer justice. Precisely for this reason, when describing the tragic world of Auschwitz, I have deliberately assumed the calm, sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge”. You will rarely hear me say that, but this book I consider a must. Perhaps the only thing we could all do for the undeserved sufferings of the accused, tortured and murdered victims of the Holocaust is to read their stories, to become familiar with the possibility of human evil and avoid it at any cost.
“Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains."

“Imagine how a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of pure judgement of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term ‘extermination camp’, and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: ‘to lie on the bottom’. “

Wat een heftig leesjaar was het afgelopen jaar: maar liefst vier boeken met het thema concentratiekampen. Exact een jaar geleden sloot ik Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. Toen ik samen met vriend Niels Auschwitz bezocht afgelopen najaar las ik vervolgens het monumentale standaardwerk van Laurence Rees dat de naam van het concentratiekamp draagt. Vlak daarna begon ik op aanraden van velen, waaronder natuurlijk vrouwlief, in ’t Hooge Nest. Omdat ik in Auschwitz bovendien de twee boeken van Primo Levi had aangeschaft wilde ik daar ook zo snel in beginnen. Aan The Truce ga ik ergens komend jaar beginnen. Dat gaat over de pijnlijke terugkeer in het gewone leven. Het verhaal is natuurlijk bekend dat men vaak niet zat te wachten op de uit de dood opgestane Joden die terugkeerden naar hun inmiddels door anderen bewoonde huis na het doorstaan van al die ontberingen. En nog op allerlei weerstand en onbegrip stuitten. Ik ben benieuwd wat Levi in dit kader nog heeft meegemaakt. Veel afschuwelijker dan zijn belevenissen in If This Is A Man kan het haast niet zijn. Hoewel ik dan misschien weer onderschat hoe koud de harten van veel mensen kunnen zijn, zeker als ze hun eigen positie, bezittingen en/of naasten denken te moeten beschermen.

Maar nu heb ik dus eerst gelezen over het gruwelijke leven van Levi in vernietigingskamp Auschwitz. Naast de alomtegenwoordige kwaadaardigheid is er gelukkig ook kameraadschap, vindingrijkheid, veerkracht en hoop. Wat moet je je best doen om daarin nog iets goeds te zien, om je aan op te trekken. Bizar dat gevangenen zoals Levi deze lijdensweg hebben kunnen doorstaan. Heel indrukwekkende vond ik ook het laatste stuk van het boek. De SS is op de vlucht geslagen nadat de Russen steeds dichterbij komen. Het duurt echter nog geruime tijd voor ze er echt zijn en het kamp bevrijden. De honger en dorst worden nu zwaarder dan ooit tevoren. Heel veel ongelukkigen hebben die laatste fase alsnog niet overleefd. Of wat te denken van de groep van achttien die aan een maaltijd werd betrapt door een groepje SS-ers dat kort was teruggekomen en stante pede werd gefusilleerd. Pure haat en moordzucht, want alles was al verloren. Schrijnend zijn ook de grote groepen gevangenen die kort voor de bevrijding gedwongen werden om mee te lopen in de vele marsen richting andere kampen, voettochten die zij ook vaak niet overleefden. De verhalen zijn te talrijk, het is gewoon niet te bevatten allemaal wat zich destijds heeft afgespeeld.

Dit boek staat niet voor niets in allerlei top 10 lijstjes voor het beste non-fictieboek ooit. Aardig is dat het bijvoorbeeld terugkomt in de lijst van Goodreads-concurrent Hebban, waarin overigens ook ’t Hooge Nest terugkomt. Ook andere non-fictieboeken over de Jodenvervolging staan genoteerd. Natuurlijk Het Achterhuis, maar ook De Laatste Getuige van Frank Krake en Edith Egers De Keuze. Van dat laatste boek had ik nog niet eerder gehoord. Nu ik het net even heb opgezocht vrees ik dat ik voorlopig toch niet uitgelezen ben over de verschrikkingen van nazi-Duitsland, hoezeer ik ook van plan was om me voorlopig even op wat luchtiger werk te richten. Het thema blijft me toch trekken. En gelukkig went het beschrevene nooit. En dat helpt me om ‘wakker’ te blijven.

Reading this epic-like memoir, his first-hand accounts as one of the prisoners-of-war detained in a camp at Auschwitz as a legacy of World War II by Primo Levi was stunningly descriptive, inhumane and hopeful. My background reading was that I nearly finished reading its first part, "If This is a Man," depicting his arrest in late 1943 and his life along the ruthless route to the notorious camp at Auschwitz where he survived because the authority there needed his expertise as a chemist. Then I quitted after reading a few pages (Chapter 13 October 1944) a decade ago due to lack of motive. Till around New Year's Day, a GR friend notified me she liked my review on another of his equally-famous memoir, "The Periodic Table," and kindly urged me to read this one for his unimaginable hardships and persistence. At last I found the paperback, tried reading each episode under each title and switched to the hardcover I bought last week.

Moreover, it was a pity I couldn’t substantially recall what I had read in “If This is a Man,” since my reflection might be quite fragmentary and reading again on page 149 (hardcover), Chapter 13 till the end didn’t help me recall anything read and quitted after such a long time. Therefore, I would like to focus my review on the second part, “The Truce,” depicting his unthinkably tough and surrealism-like journey back home in Italy. First, it has since been agreed that Primo Levi naturally described people, things, camps, etc. per se, in other words, as objectively as possible. It might be done out of his character, his educated mind and possibly his god-like compassion. If you prefer reading short and long paragraphs of descriptions with innumerable good words and sense of humor, this book is for you.

I couldn’t help wondering what he meant by this sentence: “… It (the announcement of their return) came in the theatre and through the theatre, and it came along the muddy road, carried by a strange and illustrious messenger.” (p. 416) I would leave you to read how they knew it in the theatre in the book itself; the following three excerpts would reveal my point, the first being a complete paragraph, the second and the third being partial:

The next morning, while the Red House was already buzzing and humming like a beehive whose swarm is about to leave, we saw a small car approach along the road. Very few passed by, so our curiosity was aroused, especially as it was not a military car. It slowed down in front of the camp, turned and entered, bouncing on the rough surface in front of the bizarre façade. Then we saw that it was a car all of us knew well, a Fiat 500A, a Topolino, rusty and decrepit, with the suspension piteously deformed.

It stopped in front of the entrance, and was at once surrounded by a crowd of inquisitive people. An extraordinary figure emerged, with great effort. It went on and on emerging; it was a very tall, corpulent, rubicund man, in a uniform we had never seen before: a Soviet General, a Generalissimo, a Marshal. …

This celestial messenger, who travelled alone through the mud in a cheap ancient ramshackle car, was Marshal Timoshenko in person, Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, the hero of the Bolshevik revolution, of Karelia and Stalingrad. After his reception by the local Russians, which was singularly sober and lasted only a few minutes, he emerged once more from the buildings and chatted unaffectedly with us Italians, …; he told us that it was really true; we were to leave soon, very soon; “War over, everybody home”; … (pp. 417-419)

Just imagine how he has marvelously described such a 'strange and illustrious messenger'. I think it’s hard not to appreciate reading these superbly descriptive pages from one of the most important writers in the twentieth century.

Second, right at the beginning of the first story, "The Thaw," he has told us something horribly inhuman of which we may never dream; however, we have to keep reading with pity and sorrow from this excerpt:
... Thus all healthy prisoners were evacuated, in frightful conditions, in the direction of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, while the sick were abandoned to their fate. One can legitimately deduce from the evidence that originally the Germans did not intend to leave one man alive in the concentration camps; but a fierce night air raid and the rapidity of the Russian advance induced them to change their minds and flee, leaving their task unfinished.
In the sick bay of the Lager at Buna-Monowitz eight hundred of us remained. Of these about five hundred died from illness, cold and hunger before the Russians arrived, and another two hundred succumbed in the following days, despite the Russians' aid.
... (p. 217)

Third, we can read his innumerable episodes on his plight as one of the detainees in search of their route back home; miraculously, he had never lost hope, he simply persisted day in day out hoping to return home. For instance, he has described how he got lost in the woods and fortunately, coolly made it in getting out of such a deceiving labyrinth as told in this excerpt:

... The first time I penetrated it, I learnt to my cost, with surprise and fear, that the risk of "losing oneself in a wood" existed not only in fairly tales. I had been walking for about an hour, orienting myself as best I could by the sun, which was visible occasionally, where the branches were less thick; but then the sky clouded over, threatening rain, and when I wanted to return I realized that I had lost the north. ...
I walked on for hours, increasingly tired and uneasy, almost until dusk; and I was already beginning to think that even if my companions came to search for me, they would not find me, or would only find me days later, exhausted by hunger, perhaps already dead. ... So I continued in the prolonged twilight of the northern summer, until it was almost night, a prey now to utter panic, to the age-old fear of the dark, the forest and the unknown. Despite my weariness, I felt a violent impulse to rush ..., and to continue running so long as my strength and breath lasted.
Suddenly I heard the whistle of a train: this meant the railway was on my right, ...Following the noise of the train, I arrived at the railway before nightfall; then I kept to the glinting railway lines, ..., and reached safety, first at Starye Dorogi, then at the Red House.
... (pp. 377-378)

Therefore, we couldn't help feeling like we're watching a horror or suspense film and imagining how we could make it and be lucky like him. In brief, this memoir is worth reading due to its testament narratives and episodes unique in horrible details unthinkable to humankind, and the best we can do is that we need to pray and hope, those who know and have power please help, that such atrocities won't and shouldn't happen anywhere again on earth.

[Only read the first of the two books in this double-up]
Primo Levi's path through the camp system, and his perspective on it, seem set apart from most other accounts (Elie Wiesel for example) owing to his knowledge, which made him more valuable (in purely economic terms) to the system that used up labour as a prelude to destroying the labourers. It's interesting to compare and contrast, noticing how each survivor's account tells us a little more about the central crime of the twentieth century.

I was bought this as a Christmas present from a friend and was told simply: "No one should go on without heaving read this book". Now, I've read a few books on concentration camps (and have also visited Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland) and wasn't convinced that another account of this atrocity should be on my 'to read' list.

I did, however, give it a go and I'm so glad I did. From start to finish Primo kept me drawn in by his fantastic use of language and the way he can put a very human face to a very inhuman act. He clearly shows that what happened was evil without having to resort to describing the brutalities and dark goings-on of that period at that place. It's more a document of the society that formed within the camps, the everyday lives of the people there and an almost humorous look into the psychology of the inmates.

The second half of the book: The Truce, is a tale of the liberation of the camps by the Russians and his journey back to Italy. This part is just as compelling as the first with the same running theme, a man trying to find his way whilst being bombarded with obsticles at every corner. It's fasinating to read how he managed to find shelter in the most unlikely of places, and how he would bargain his clothes for a chicken in villages he stumbles upon.

The greatest feat that Levi achieves is to allow the reader to relate to situations that occur, even though the subject matter isn't anywhere near as awful as it is in this book.

To say 'this book changed my life' is a cliche that I, myself, hate just as much as everyone else, but I can't think of any other appropriate phrase to sum up this book. To quote my friend: "No one should go on without having read this book".