Perspective

Primo Levi was arrested and subsequently forcibly deported to Auschwitz in February, 1944. He was deemed suitable for forced labor and assigned to the Monowitz-Buna forced labor camp, where he survived for approximately eleven months. In January, 1945, he became ill with scarlet fever and was incarcerated in the camp's infectious diseases unit of the hospital. He was there when the Nazis evacuated the camp before the advancing Russian army and deemed unfit for evacuation, so he was abandoned with several hundred other sick prisoners. Although many died, the survivors were liberated by the Russians, who also provided medical assistance. Levi thus survived the Holocaust and returned home to Turin, Italy and within a few years had written the first edition of the autobiography currently being considered.

Levi, uniquely positioned to describe survival in Auschwitz, states that his reason for writing the autobiography is the moral requirement to bear witness...