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Auschwitz Report

primo levi leonardo de benedetti judith woolf robert s.c. gordon

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While in a Russian-administered holding camp in Katowice, Poland, in 1945, Primo Levi was asked to provide a report on living conditions in Auschwitz. Published the following year, it was then forgotten, and has until now remained unknown to a wider public.

Dating from the weeks and months immediately after the war, Auschwitz Report represents a fascinating and unusual return to the very earliest phase of Holocaust testimony. It details the author’s deportation to Auschwitz, selections for work and extermination, everyday life in the camp, and the organization and working of the gas chambers. It constitutes Levi’s first, astonishingly lucid attempts to come to terms with the raw horror of events that would drive him to create some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature and testimony. Auschwitz Report is a major literary and historical discovery.

97 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,1989

This edition

Format
97 pages, Hardcover
Published
October 17, 2006 by Verso
ISBN
9781844670925
ASIN
1844670929
Language
English

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About the author

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primo levi

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Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]) was a chemist and writer, the author of books, novels, short stories, essays, and poems. His unique 1975 work, The Periodic Table, linked to qualities of the elements, was named by the Royal Institution of Great Britain as the best science book ever written.

Levi spent eleven months imprisoned at Monowitz, one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex (record number: 174,517) before the camp was liberated by the Red Army on 18 January 1945. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camps alive.

The Primo Levi Center, dedicated "to studying the history and culture of Italian Jewry," was named in his honor.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 56 votes)
5 stars
14(25%)
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30(54%)
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56 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
readergurl6
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I saw this book on a shelf and was immediately drawn to the subject. It contains a medical report on conditions in Auschwitz by a doctor and former inmate --clinical, objective, and to the point.

It was interesting to read this death camp described in a calm and methodical manner, without the usual emphasis on the horrors and abuses.

Although I welcomed this fresh perspective, I couldn't help but feel an eerie undercurrent as I read the work, treating this subject as a detached lab report divided by categories and timelines. One could say it was almost 'Nazi-esque'.

Clearly not a definitive work on internment in German/Polish concentration camps, this title fills an interesting niche and should be a part of the "Holocaust Canon".
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Blackstealth
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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3.75 /5
Difficult to rate. As others have stated, it's a dry read bar the last two essays by Primo Levi. But then again, the main text was commissioned to be a factual report and that's how it's indeed.
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sho52
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A factual account of their time in Auschwitz-Monowitz and the liberation by the Russians.
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TheArchangel
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A short medical essay written by Primo Levi about the medical diseases in Auschwitz. it's a fact filled book. not much of a personal anecdote or stories.

Short and to the point.
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Jeana
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I read this alongside Fatelessness by Kertész.

This edition ends with Primo Levi's obituaries for co-author Leonardo de Benedetti. They are short and beautiful statements of love and friendship.

"Apparently frail, he possessed a rare strength of mind which showed itself more in endurance than in action and which communicated itself invaluably to those who were close to him... In the intervals between those death sentences and temporary reprieves he remained as he was, frail but not broken by the brutal life of the Lager, mildly and calmly aware, a friend to everyone, incapable of rancor, without anguish and without fear."
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Yaoo_Whee
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is a straight forward report written by Primo Levi & Dr.Dibenedetto on the medical status of the camp & inmates of Auschwitz, written at the request of the liberating Russian army, and stating facts that have become well-known in the years since the war, though still shocking.
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MOOMONSTER
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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When I read the report a few months ago, I gave it 3 stars. Now (November 2016) - in hindsight - I realised that I made a mistake; I therefore decided to clear my rating. This is a report, it does not narrate a story and is not meant to be entertaining. Its purpose is to present facts in an objective unbiased manner.

If one is looking for a more personal, heartrending, account of the Holocaust, one should read Primo Levi's books: 'Se questo é un uomo' (If this is a Man) and 'La Tregua'.(The Truce) and many more. Not this one.
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