Primo Levi: Difference between revisions

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 edition, p. 391)</ref> The goal of the {{lang|de|Lager}} was the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe, and no one could renounce Judaism; the Nazis treated Jews as a racial group rather than as a religious one. Levi, along with most of Turin's Jewish intellectuals, had not been religiously observant before [[World War II]], but the [[Italian racial laws]] and the Nazi camps impressed on him his identity as a Jew. Of the many children deported to the camps, almost all were murdered.<ref>Appendix to an Italian schools edition of {{lang|it|Se questo è un uomo}}, section 6, reprinted in: {{lang|it|Se questo è un uomo}} – {{lang|it|La tregua}} Einaudi, Torino (1989) p. 339 {{lang|it|"... nei Lager tedeschi la strage era pressoché totale: non si fermava neppure davanti ai bambini, che furono uccisi nelle camere a gas a centinaia di migliaia, cosa unica fra tutte le atrocità della storia umana." "... in the German camps the massacre was almost total: it did not even stop in front of children, who were killed in the gas chambers by the hundreds of thousands, something unique among all the atrocities of human history."}}</ref><!--where does Levi talk about racial group rather than religious one; children being taken etc-->