2.5

I am only rating the eulogies to Leonardo de Benedetti at the end, as the bulk of this book is unrateable as other goodreads users have said.

no review. just read it.

So unbelievable that these things actually happened. While reading was picturing Auschwitz and Birkenau camps since have toured the camps so it was that much more real for me.

This book is an unemotional report of some of the events, practices and routines in Auschwitz, written by a 25 year old chemist (Levi) and a middle-aged surgeon (de Benedetti); 2 of the few survivors who originally came from the detention camp in Fossoli, Italy.
Bleak, pale as the face of death, bare as bone. Levi and de Benedetti witness and account. The lack of obvious emotion -we are reading a report, not fiction- brings the horror into shards of sharp glass.

Good Historical Book

Learned more than I expected about the life of death camps prisoners. Factual and precise information i found interesting.
Good writer now on to the next book.
JM

3.5

Confronting to read about the medical atrocities that took place in one of the most infamous Nazi concentration camps. A firsthand account written by medical professionals, it describes the sorts of diseases and ailments experienced by prisoners as well as the treatments administered or rather, lack-thereof. Wonderful to also read some insight into Levi and de Benedetti’s friendship and how they both saved one another throughout the years. A piece of history, recorded shortly after liberation, and I felt pain at times reading about the experiments that took place and how they just allowed people to contract illnesses from one another. Many of these things I already knew about - being someone who knows a lot about this era - but reading eyewitness accounts will never not be confronting and eye opening. Very glad to have read this - a piece of history which I think deserves to be preserved for ages to come. Yes, it’s technically a document describing medical conditions but it also describes human spirit. I think it’s very important.