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{{Short description|Italian Jewish partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer (
{{
{{Use British English|date=November 2016}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Primo <!--DO NOT ADD "MICHELE" HERE-->
| image = Primo Levi.gif
| alt = photograph
| pseudonym = Damiano Malabaila (used for some of his fictional works)
| birth_date = {{birth date|
| birth_place = [[
| death_date = {{death date and age|
| death_place =
| resting_place =
| occupation = Writer, [[chemist]]
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}}
'''Primo Michele Levi'''<ref>Ian Thomson, ''Primo Levi'' (2019) pp.
Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but some, after careful consideration, have suggested that the fall was accidental because he left no suicide note, there were no witnesses, and he was on medication that could have affected his blood pressure and caused him to fall accidentally.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Intern|date=2012-07-09|title=Primo Levi's Last Moments|url=http://bostonreview.net/diego-gambetta-primo-levi-last-moments|access-date=2021-01-11|website=Boston Review|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=2019-11-11|title=Primo Levi's Work Outshines His Murky Death|url=https://momentmag.com/primo-levis-work-outshines-his-murky-death/|access-date=2021-01-11|website=Moment Magazine|language=en-US}}</ref>
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=== Early life ===
Levi was born in 1919 in [[Turin]], Italy, at Corso Re Umberto 75, into a liberal Jewish family.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=LEVI, Primo in "Dizionario Biografico"|url=https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/primo-levi_(Dizionario-Biografico)|access-date=2021-09-06|website=[[Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani]]|language=it-IT}}</ref> His father, Cesare, worked for the manufacturing firm [[Ganz]] and spent much of his time working abroad in Hungary, where Ganz was based. Cesare was an avid reader and [[autodidact]]. Levi's mother, Ester, known to everyone as Rina, was well educated, having attended the {{lang|it|Istituto Maria Letizia}}. She too was an avid reader, played the piano, and spoke fluent French.<ref name="Angier p50">Angier p. 50.</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite news|last=Motola|first=Gabriel|date=1995|title=Primo Levi, The Art of Fiction No. 140|language=en|volume=Spring 1995|work=[[The Paris Review]]|issue=134|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1670/the-art-of-fiction-no-140-primo-levi|access-date=2021-09-06|issn=0031-2037}}</ref> The marriage between Rina and Cesare had been arranged by Rina's father.<ref name="Angier p50"/> On their wedding day, Rina's father, Cesare Luzzati, gave Rina the apartment at {{lang|it|Corso Re Umberto}}, where Primo Levi lived for almost his entire life.
[[File:Primo Levi.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Levi, {{circa}}1950s]]
In 1921 Anna Maria, Levi's sister, was born; he remained close to her all her life. In 1925 he entered the {{lang|it|Felice Rignon}} primary school in Turin. A thin and delicate child, he was shy and considered himself ugly; he excelled academically. His school record includes long periods of absence during which he was tutored at home, at first by Emilia Glauda and then by Marisa Zini, daughter of philosopher Zino Zini.<ref>Angier, p. 44.</ref> The children spent summers with their mother in the Waldensian valleys southwest of Turin, where Rina rented a farmhouse. His father remained in the city, partly because of his dislike of the rural life, but also because of his infidelities.<ref>Angier, p. 62.</ref>
In September 1930 Levi entered the {{lang|it|Massimo d'Azeglio}} Royal Gymnasium a year ahead of normal entrance requirements.<ref>Thomson p. 40.</ref> In class he was the youngest, the shortest and the cleverest, as well as being the only Jew. Only two boys there bullied him for being Jewish, but their animosity was traumatic.<ref>Thomson, p. 42.</ref> In August 1932, following two years attendance also at the [[Talmud Torah]] school in Turin to pick up the elements of doctrine and culture, he sang in the local synagogue for his [[Bar Mitzvah]].<ref>Thomson 2019 p. 44:'Half a century later, he could still remember 200 words, but had little idea what they meant. The sole aim of the Torah, it seemed to Levi was to teach boys how to read their prayer
In July 1934 at the age of 14, he sat the exams for the [[Liceo Classico D'Azeglio]], a [[Lyceum]] ([[sixth form college|sixth form]] or [[senior high school]]) specializing in the [[classics]], and was admitted that year. The school was noted for its well-known [[Anti-fascism|anti-Fascist]] teachers, among them the philosopher [[Norberto Bobbio]], and [[Cesare Pavese]], who later became one of Italy's best-known novelists.<ref>It is often reported that Pavese was Levi's teacher of Italian. This is refuted strongly by Thomson (2002).</ref> Levi continued to be bullied during his time at the Lyceum, although six other Jews were in his class.<ref>Thomson p. 55.</ref> Upon reading ''Concerning the Nature of Things'' by
In 1937, he was summoned before the War Ministry and accused of ignoring a draft notice from the [[Regia Marina|Italian Royal Navy]]—one day before he was to write a final examination on Italy's participation in the Spanish Civil War, based on a quote from [[Thucydides]]: "We have the singular merit of being brave to the utmost degree." Distracted and terrified by the draft accusation, he failed the exam—the first poor grade of his life—and was devastated. His father was able to keep him out of the Navy by enrolling him in the Fascist militia (''Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale''). He remained a member through his first year of university, until the passage of the [[Italian Racial Laws]] of 1938 forced his expulsion. Levi later recounted this series of events in the short story "Fra Diavolo on the Po".<ref>Sam Magavern, [https://books.google.com/books?id=CZDrLtSGzOIC&pg=PA12 ''Primo Levi’s Universe: A Writer’s Journey,''] Macmillan 2009 p. 12.</ref>
He retook and passed his final examinations, and in October enrolled at the [[University of Turin]] to study chemistry. As one of 80 candidates, he spent three months taking lectures, and in February, after passing his ''colloquio'' (oral examination), he was selected as one of 20 to move on to the full-time chemistry curriculum.
In the liberal period as well as in the first decade of the Fascist regime, Jews held many public positions, and were prominent in literature, science and politics.<ref>''The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution'', translation by John and Anne C. Tedeschi, Wisconsin University Press, Madison 2006, p. 419</ref> In 1929 Mussolini signed an agreement with the Catholic Church, the [[Lateran Treaty]], which established Catholicism as the State religion, allowed the Church to influence many sectors of education and public life, and relegated other religions to the status of "tolerated cults". In 1936 Italy's conquest of Ethiopia and the expansion of what the regime regarded as the Italian "colonial empire" brought the question of "race" to the forefront. In the context set by these events, and the 1940 alliance with Hitler's Germany, the situation of the Jews of Italy changed radically.
In July 1938 a group of prominent Italian scientists and intellectuals published the "[[Manifesto of Race]]," a mixture of racial and ideological antisemitic theories from ancient and modern sources. This treatise formed the basis for the Italian Racial Laws of October 1938. After its enactment Italian Jews lost their basic civil rights, positions in public offices, and their assets. Their books were prohibited: Jewish writers could no longer publish in magazines owned by Aryans. Jewish students who had begun their course of study were permitted to continue, but new Jewish students were barred from entering university. Levi had matriculated a year earlier than scheduled enabling him to take a degree.<ref name=":1" />
In 1939, Levi discovered his passion for mountain hiking.<ref>Thomson p 93.</ref> A friend, Sandro Delmastro, taught him how to hike, and they spent many weekends in the mountains above Turin. Physical exertion, the risk, and the battle with the elements while following Sandro's example enabled him to put out of his mind the nightmare situation precipitating all over Europe as, communing with the sky and earth, he managed to satisfy his desire for liberty, realize fully his own strength, and the reasons behind his ardent need to grasp the nature of things that had led him to study chemistry,{{clarify|date=March 2023}} as he later wrote in the chapter "Iron" of ''The Periodic Table'' (1975).<ref>''Il sistema periodico'' in ''Primo Levi, Opere'' Einaudi vol. 1 1987 pp.
=== Chemistry ===
Because of the new racial laws and the increasing intensity of prevalent fascism, Levi had difficulty finding a supervisor for his graduation thesis, which was on the subject of [[Walden inversion]], a study of the asymmetry of the [[carbon]] atom. Eventually taken on by Dr. Nicolò Dallaporta, he graduated in mid-1941 with full marks and merit, having submitted additional theses on [[x-ray]]s and [[Electric potential energy|electrostatic energy]]. His degree certificate bore the remark, "of Jewish race". The racial laws prevented Levi from finding a suitable permanent job after graduation.<ref name=":1" />
In December 1941 Levi received an informal job offer from an Italian officer to work as a chemist, under a clandestine identity, at an [[asbestos]] mine in [[Balangero|San Vittore]]. The project was to extract nickel from the mine spoil, a challenge he accepted with pleasure. Levi later understood that, if successful, he would be aiding the German war effort, which was suffering nickel shortages in the production of armaments.<ref>Angier p. 174.</ref> The job required Levi to work under a false name with false papers. Three months later, in March 1942, his father died. Levi left the mine in June to work in [[Milan]]. Recruited through a fellow student at Turin University, working for the Swiss firm of A Wander Ltd on a project to extract an anti-diabetic from vegetable matter, he took the job in a Swiss company to escape the race laws. It soon became clear that the project had no chance of succeeding, but it was in no one's interest to say so.<ref>Thomson p 119.</ref>
In July 1943, King [[Victor Emmanuel III of Italy|Victor Emmanuel III]] deposed Mussolini and appointed a new government under Marshal [[Pietro Badoglio]], prepared to sign the [[Armistice of Cassibile]] with the Allies. When the armistice was made public on 8 September, the Germans occupied northern and central Italy, [[Gran Sasso raid|liberated Mussolini]] from imprisonment and appointed him as head of the [[Italian Social Republic]], a puppet state in German-occupied northern Italy. Levi returned to Turin to find his mother and sister in refuge in their holiday home [[Chieri|'La Saccarello' in the hills outside the city]]. The three embarked to [[Saint-Vincent, Italy|Saint-Vincent]] in the [[Aosta Valley]], where they could be hidden. Being pursued as Jews, many of whom had already been interned by the authorities, they moved up the hillside to Amay in the {{ILL|Col de Joux|it}}, a rebellious area highly suitable for guerilla activities.<ref>Peter Thomson, [https://books.google.com/books?id=FKTBDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA136 ''Primo Levi''] [[Random House]], (2003) 2019 {{isbn|978-1-448-18073-8}} pp.
The [[Italian resistance movement]] became increasingly active in the German-occupied zone. Levi and some comrades took to the foothills of the Alps, and in October formed a partisan group in the hope of being affiliated to the liberal ''[[Giustizia e Libertà]]''. Untrained for such a venture, he and his companions were arrested by the [[Blackshirts|Fascist militia]] on 13 December 1943. When told he would be shot as an [[Italian partisans|Italian partisan]], Levi confessed to being Jewish. He was sent to the [[Fossoli di Carpi|internment camp at Fossoli]] near [[Modena]].<!--this paragraph needs some sources - as it stands it's a translation from the Italian Wikipedia article--> He recalled that as long as Fossoli was under the control of the Italian Social Republic, rather than Nazi Germany, he was not harmed.
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=== Auschwitz ===
{{more citations needed|section|date=January 2024}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2007-0057, IG-Farbenwerke Auschwitz.jpg|thumb|IG Farben factory in [[Monowitz]] (near Auschwitz) 1941<br />{{Coord|50.036094|19.275534|display=title,inline|region:PL-MP_type:landmark|name=Site of Buna Werke plant approximately 10km or 6.2 miles from Auschwitz}}]]
[[File:FARBEN DWORY.png|thumb|upright=1.3|[[Monowitz concentration camp#Buna Werke|Buna Werke]], [[Monowitz]] and subcamps]]
Fossoli was then taken over by the
Levi knew some German from reading German publications on chemistry; he worked to orient quickly to life in the camp without attracting the attention of the privileged inmates. He used bread to pay a more experienced Italian prisoner for German lessons and orientation in Auschwitz. He was given a smuggled soup ration each day by [[Lorenzo Perrone]], an Italian civilian bricklayer working there as a [[forced labour]]er. Levi's professional qualifications were useful: in mid-November 1944, he secured a position as an assistant in [[IG Farben]]'s [[Monowitz Buna Werke|Buna Werke]] laboratory that was intended to produce [[synthetic rubber]]. By avoiding [[penal labour|hard labour]] in freezing outdoor temperatures he was able to survive; also, by stealing materials from the laboratory and trading them for extra food.<ref>See the chapter "Cerium" in Levi's book ''The Periodic Table''</ref> Shortly before the camp was liberated by the [[Red Army]], he fell ill with [[scarlet fever]] and was placed in the camp's sanatorium (camp hospital). On 18 January 1945, the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] hurriedly evacuated the camp as the Red Army approached, forcing all but the gravely ill on a long [[Death marches (Holocaust)|death march]] to a site further from the front, which resulted in the deaths of the vast majority of the remaining prisoners on the march. Levi's illness spared him this fate.
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==== 1946–1960 ====
Levi was almost unrecognisable on his return to Turin.
At a Jewish New Year party in 1946, he met Lucia Morpurgo, who offered to teach him to dance. Levi fell in love with Lucia. At about this time, he started writing poetry about his experiences in Auschwitz.
On 21 January 1946, he started work at DUCO, a [[Du Pont Co.|Du Pont Company]] paint factory outside Turin. Because of the extremely limited train service, Levi stayed in the factory dormitory during the week. This gave him the opportunity to write undisturbed. He started to write the first draft of ''[[If This Is a Man]]''.<ref>Thomson p. 229</ref> Every day he scribbled notes on train tickets and scraps of paper as memories came to him. At the end of February, he had ten pages detailing the last ten days between the German evacuation and the arrival of the Red Army. For the next ten months, the book took shape in his dormitory as he typed up his recollections each night.
On 22 December 1946, the manuscript was complete. Lucia, who now reciprocated Levi's love, helped him to edit it, to make the narrative flow more naturally.<ref>Thomson p. 241.</ref> In January 1947, Levi was taking the finished manuscript around to publishers. It was rejected by [[Giulio Einaudi|Einaudi]] on the advice of [[Natalia Ginzburg]], and in the United States was turned down by [[Little, Brown and Company]] on the advice of rabbi [[Joshua L. Liebman|Joshua Liebman]], an opinion which contributed to the neglect of his work in that country for four decades.<ref>Ian Thompson, ''Primo Levi,'' (2003) 2019 pp.
Eventually, Levi found a publisher, Franco Antonicelli, through a friend of his sister's.<ref name="Thomson p246">Thomson p. 246.</ref> Antonicelli was an amateur publisher, but as an active anti-Fascist, he supported the idea of the book.
At the end of June 1947, Levi suddenly left DUCO and teamed up with an old friend Alberto Salmoni to run a chemical consultancy from the top floor of Salmoni's parents' house. Many of Levi's experiences of this time found their way into his later writing. They made most of their money from making and supplying [[stannous chloride]] for mirror makers,<ref>Thomson p. 249.</ref> delivering the unstable chemical by bicycle across the city. The attempts to make lipsticks from reptile excreta and a coloured [[Tooth enamel|enamel]] to coat teeth were turned into short stories. Accidents in their laboratory filled the Salmoni house with unpleasant smells and corrosive gases.
In September 1947, Levi married Lucia and a month later, on 11 October, ''If This Is a Man'' was published with a print run of 2,000 copies. In April 1948, with Lucia pregnant with their first child, Levi decided that the life of an independent chemist was too precarious. He agreed to work for Accatti in the family paint business which traded under the name SIVA. In October 1948, his daughter Lisa was born.
During this period, his friend [[Lorenzo Perrone]]'s physical and psychological health declined. Lorenzo had been a civilian forced worker in Auschwitz, who for six months had given part of his ration and a piece of bread to Levi without asking for anything in return.<ref>''If This Is Man'' Chapter – 'The Events of Summer'</ref> The gesture saved Levi's life. In his memoir, Levi contrasted Lorenzo with everyone else in the camp, prisoners and guards alike, as someone who managed to preserve his humanity. After the war, Lorenzo could not cope with the memories of what he had seen
In 1950, having demonstrated his chemical talents to Accatti, Levi was promoted to Technical Director at SIVA.<ref>Angier p. 487</ref> As SIVA's principal chemist and
He became involved in organisations pledged to remembering and recording the horror of the camps. In 1954 he visited [[Buchenwald]] to mark the ninth anniversary of the camp's liberation from the Nazis. Levi dutifully attended many such anniversary events over the years and recounted his own experiences. In July 1957, his son Renzo was born.
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Despite a positive review by [[Italo Calvino]] in {{lang|it|[[L'Unità]]}}, only 1,500 copies of ''If This Is a Man'' were sold. In 1958 [[Arnoldo Mondadori Editore|Einaudi]], a major publisher, published it in a revised form and promoted it.
In 1958 [[Stuart Woolf]], in close collaboration with Levi, translated ''If This Is a Man'' into English, and it was published in the UK in 1959 by Orion Press. Also in 1959 Heinz Riedt, also under close supervision by Levi,<ref>Thomson p. 287.</ref> translated it into German. As one of Levi's primary reasons for writing the book was to get the German people to realise what had been done in their name, and to accept at least partial responsibility, this translation was perhaps the most significant to him.{{citation needed|date=December 2023}}
==== 1961–1974 ====
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He published two volumes of science fiction short stories under the pen name of Damiano Malabaila, which explored ethical and philosophical questions. These imagined the effects on society of inventions which many would consider beneficial, but which, he saw, would have serious implications. Many of the stories from the two books {{lang|it|Storie naturali}} (''Natural Histories'', 1966) and {{lang|it|Vizio di forma}} (''Structural Defect'', 1971) were later collected and published in English as ''The Sixth Day and Other Tales''.
In 1974 Levi arranged to go into semi-retirement from SIVA in order to have more time to write. He also wanted to escape the burden of responsibility for managing the paint plant.<ref>Thomson p. 366.</ref>
==== 1975–1987 ====
In 1975, a collection of Levi's poetry was published under the title {{lang|it|L'osteria di Brema}} (''The Bremen Beer Hall''). It was published in English as ''Shema: Collected Poems''.
He wrote two other highly praised memoirs, {{lang|it|Lilit e altri racconti}} (''Moments of Reprieve'', 1978) and {{lang|it|Il sistema periodico}} (''The Periodic Table'', 1975). ''[[Moments of Reprieve]]'' deals with characters he observed during imprisonment. ''[[The Periodic Table (short story collection)|The Periodic Table]]'' is a collection of
In 1977 at the age of 58, Levi retired as a part-time consultant at the SIVA paint factory to devote himself full-time to writing. Like all his books, [[The Wrench|''La chiave a stella'']] (1978), published in the US in 1986 as ''The Monkey Wrench'' and in the UK in 1987 as ''The Wrench,'' is difficult to categorize. Some reviews describe it as a collection of stories about work and workers told by a narrator who resembles Levi. Others have called it a novel, created by the linked stories and characters. Set in the Fiat-run Russian company town of [[Tolyatti|Togliattigrad]], it portrays the engineer as a hero on whom others depend. The Piedmontese engineer Faussone has travelled the world as an expert in erecting cranes and bridges. Most of the stories involve the solution of industrial problems by the use of [[troubleshooting]] skills; many stories come from the author's personal experience. The underlying philosophy is that pride in one's work is necessary for
In 1984, Levi published his only [[novel]], ''[[If Not Now, When? (novel)|If Not Now, When?]]''
The book was inspired by events during Levi's train journey home after release from the camp, narrated in ''The Truce''. At one point in the journey, a band of Zionists hitched their wagon to the refugee train. Levi was impressed by their strength, resolve, organisation, and sense of purpose.
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[[File:Moments before Rudolf Höß was put to death for his crimes at Auschwitz.jpg|thumb|left|[[Rudolf Höss]] immediately before being hanged]]
In March 1985, he wrote the introduction to the re-publication of the autobiography<ref>Commandant of Auschwitz: {{lang|de|Rudolf Höß}}. {{ISBN|1-84212-024-7}}</ref> of [[Rudolf Höss]], who was commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to 1943. In it, he writes, "It's filled with evil .
Also in 1985, a volume of his essays, previously published in {{lang|it|La Stampa}}, was published under the title {{lang|it|L'altrui mestiere}} (''Other People's Trades''). Levi used to write these stories and hoard them, releasing them to {{lang|it|La Stampa}} at the rate of about one a week. The essays ranged from book reviews and ponderings about strange things in nature, to fictional short stories.<ref name=":0" />
In 1986, his book, {{lang|it|I sommersi e i salvati}} (''[[The Drowned and the Saved]]''), was published. In it he tried to analyse why people behaved the way they did at Auschwitz
Also in 1986. another collection of short stories, previously published in {{lang|it|La Stampa}}, was assembled and published as {{lang|it|Racconti e saggi}} (some of which were published in the English volume ''[[The Mirror Maker]]'').
At the time of his death in April 1987, Levi was working on another selection of essays called ''The Double Bond,'' which took the form of letters to {{lang|it|"La Signorina"}}.<ref>Angier p. 80.</ref> These essays are very personal in nature. Approximately five or six chapters of this manuscript exist. [[Carole Angier]], in her biography of Levi, describes how she tracked some of these essays down. She wrote that others were being kept from public view by Levi's close friends, to whom he gave them, and they may have been destroyed.
==== Posthumous publications ====
In March 2007, [[Harper's Magazine|''Harper's Magazine'']] published an English translation of Levi's story {{lang|it|"Knall"}}, about a fictitious weapon that is fatal at close range but harmless more than a meter away. It originally appeared in his 1971 book {{lang|it|Vizio di forma}}
''A Tranquil Star'', a collection of seventeen stories translated into English by [[Ann Goldstein (translator)|Ann Goldstein]] and Alessandra Bastagli<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780713999556,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927203451/http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780713999556,00.html | archive-date=2007-09-27 | title=A Tranquil Star
In 2015, Penguin published ''The Complete Works of Primo Levi'', ed. Ann Goldstein. This is the first time that Levi's entire oeuvre has been translated into English.
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Levi died on 11 April 1987 after a fall from the interior landing of his third-story apartment in Turin to the ground floor below. The coroner ruled his death a suicide. Three of his biographers (Angier, Thomson and Anissimov) agreed, but other writers (including at least one who knew him personally) questioned that determination.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Intern|date=2012-07-09|title=Primo Levi's Last Moments|url=http://bostonreview.net/diego-gambetta-primo-levi-last-moments|access-date=2021-01-12|website=Boston Review|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=2019-11-11|title=Primo Levi's Work Outshines His Murky Death|url=https://momentmag.com/primo-levis-work-outshines-his-murky-death/|access-date=2021-01-12|website=Moment Magazine|language=en-US}}</ref>
In his later life, Levi indicated that he was suffering from depression; factors likely included responsibility for his elderly mother and mother-in-law, with whom he was living, and lingering traumatic memories of his experiences.<ref>George Jochnowitz, [http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Thomson.html "Review of ''Primo Levi: A Life'' by Ian Thomson"]. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2003</ref> According to the chief rabbi of Rome [[Elio Toaff]], Levi telephoned him for the first time ten minutes before the incident. Levi said he found it impossible to look at his mother, who was ill with cancer, without recalling the faces of people stretched out on benches in Auschwitz.<ref>Diego Gambetta, [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/07/arts/primo-levis-plunge-a-case-against-suicide.html 'Primo Levi's Plunge: A Case Against Suicide,'] [[The New York Times]] 7 August 1999</ref> The Nobel laureate and fellow Holocaust survivor [[Elie Wiesel]] said, at the time, "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later."<ref>Elie Wiesel: "Con l'incubo che tutto sia accaduto invano." ''La Stampa,'' Turin, 14 April 1987, p. 3. [http://www.archiviolastampa.it/component/option,com_lastampa/task,search/mod,libera/action,viewer/Itemid,3/page,3/articleid,0972_01_1987_0087_0003_13356602/]</ref>
== Views on Nazism, Soviet Union and antisemitism ==
Levi wrote ''If This Is a Man'' to bear witness to the horrors of the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jewish people and others. In turn, he read many accounts by witnesses and survivors, and attended meetings of survivors, becoming a prominent symbolic figure for anti-fascists in Italy.<ref name=":0" />
Levi visited over 130 schools to talk about his experiences in Auschwitz. He vigorously repudiated [[historical revisionist]] attitudes in German historiography that emerged in the ''[[Historikerstreit]]'' led by the works of people like [[Andreas Hillgruber]] and [[Ernst Nolte]], who drew parallels between Nazism and Stalinism.<ref>Ernesto Ferrero, 'Cronologia,' in Primo Levi, ''Opere,'' [[Einaudi]] vol. 1, 1987 p. lxi.</ref> Levi rejected the idea that the labor camp system depicted in [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]]'s ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' and that of the Nazi {{lang|it|Lager}} ({{lang-de|link=no|konzentrationslager}}; see [[Nazi concentration camps]]) were comparable. The death rate in Stalin's gulags was 30% at worst, he wrote, while in the extermination camps, he estimated it to be 90–98%.<ref>Appendix to an Italian schools edition of {{lang|it|Se questo è un uomo}}, reprinted in ''Opere'' Einaudi, 1987 vol. 1, pp.
His view was that the Nazi death camps and the attempted annihilation of the Jews
===Distinct purpose of extermination camps===
The purpose of the Nazi camps was not the same as that of Stalin's ''gulags'', Levi wrote in an appendix to ''If This Is a Man'', though it is a "lugubrious comparison between two models of hell."<ref>(Abacus 2001
Levi wrote in clear, dispassionate style about his experiences in Auschwitz, with an embrace of whatever humanity he found, showing no lasting hatred of the Germans, although he made it clear that he did not forgive any of the culprits.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Levi |first1=Primo |title=Primo Levi's Heartbreaking, Heroic Answers to the Most Common Questions He Was Asked About
== Works ==
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== Adaptations ==
* Five of Levi's poems (''Shema'', ''25 Febbraio 1944'', ''Il canto del corvo'', ''Cantare'' and ''Congedo'') have been set to music by [[Simon Sargon]] in the [[song cycle]] ''Shema: 5 Poems of Primo Levi'' in 1987.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.musicofremembrance.org/work/shema |title= Shemà {{!}} Music of Remembrance |website=musicofremembrance.org |access-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220828141647/https://www.musicofremembrance.org/work/shema|archive-date=
* The 1997 film {{lang|it|La Tregua}} (''[[The Truce (1997 film)|The Truce]]''), starring [[John Turturro]], was adapted from his 1963 memoir of the same title and recounts Levi's long journey home with other displaced people after his liberation from Auschwitz.
* ''[[If This Is a Man]]'' was adapted by [[Antony Sher]] into a one-man stage production ''[[Primo (2005 film)|Primo]]'' in 2004. A version of this production was broadcast on [[BBC Four]] in the UK on 20 September 2007.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/09_september/13/primo.shtml|title=
== In popular culture ==
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* A quotation from Levi appears on the sleeve of the second album by the Welsh rock band [[Manic Street Preachers]], titled ''[[Gold Against the Soul]]''. The quote is from Levi's poem "Song of Those Who Died in Vain".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzLh-7jTSo8 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/IzLh-7jTSo8| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|title=Manic Street Preachers interview, Raw Soup 1993 (higher quality) |website=[[YouTube]] |date=8 September 2009 |access-date=19 May 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Peters |first=Mathijs |title=Popular Music, Critique and Manic Street Preachers |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2020 |isbn= |pages=179}}</ref>
* [[David Blaine]] has Primo Levi's Auschwitz camp number, 174517, tattooed on his left forearm.<ref>[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/08/15/jews_with_tattoos/ "Jews With Tattoos"], ''Boston Globe'', 15 August 2004</ref>
* In [[Lavie Tidhar]]'s 2014 novel ''A Man Lies Dreaming'', the protagonist Shomer (a [[Yiddish]] pulp writer) encounters Levi in Auschwitz
*In the pilot episode of ''[[Black Earth Rising]]'', Rwandan genocide survivor and self-described "major depressive" Kate Ashby tells her therapist, in her final session addressing her survivors' guilt and having overmedicated herself with antidepressants, that she has read the Primo Levi book he'd assigned her, and if she chooses to attempt suicide, she'll jump straight out of a third story window.
*The last track on ''[[The Noise (album)|The Noise]]'' by [[Peter Hammill]] is entitled "Primo on the Parapet".<ref>[[Peter Hammill]], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HDH9kOvDkc 'Primo on the parapet,'][[YouTube]] 2010</ref>
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[[Category:Italian anti-fascists]]
[[Category:Italian atheists]]
[[Category:20th-century Italian chemists]]
[[Category:Italian male novelists]]
[[Category:Italian male poets]]
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