Much of the power here is that he was not writing for a commercial audience in 1947. As this belatedly helped me understand, the "Holocaust" as a concept didn't exist - and wouldn't for many more years. Levi simply recorded, without hatred, his vivid recollections of surviving in Auschwitz. To help himself think it through; to record for others. Spare, non-dramatic - and therefore excruciating.Here in 2014, have we "heard it all before"? Yes - but I'd say Levi's book - as a first-person account written very shortly after the war - is in a class by itself. And worth reading no matter how much other material of this sort one has previously read. His detailed descriptions of the markets going on in the camp (and involving townspeople) were new to me. The dreaded "selections." Cold, hungry, degraded.
Also interesting in respect of the camps: the large number of countries represented among, and languages spoken by, the prisoners. Levi encountered several Italians (and a few others) who were crucially helpful allies.
He was one of a handful of survivors out of the 500+ deportees in his group. Survival aided in part by his skill set - as a chemist, he was assigned to a lab and avoided some of the harsh outdoor work as his second winter in the camp set in. Also was lucky to be very ill at the time the Russians liberated the camps, as he was left behind in sick bay while the Nazis dealt with many of the other prisoners.
"If This is a Man" didn't find an audience for a number of years. Levi wrote a number of books after it. After "If This is a Man" caught on, he wrote a companion piece - "The Truce" - recounting his long journey from Auschwitz back to Turin. The Russians were in charge of most of the trip, and his stories of the journey are consistently interesting. It was the days of "displaced persons." I particularly liked his description of how it felt to pass through Germany on his way back to Italy.
His story is truly amazing (the cliche actually applies here). PJ recommendation.
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