If it is a man ( questo E a uomo ) is an autobiographical account of Primo Levi, written between December 1945 and January 1947.

Genesis of work

Primo Levi had been charged in 1945, with another deportee, to write a report on the operation of the Death camp of Auschwitz for the allies. This work will be used to him as a basis for the drafting of questo E a uomo . It was difficult for him to find an editor Italian. Finally the book appeared in 1947, published to 2500 specimens and passed unperceived. It is not that with the publication of its second book the Truce ( Tregua ), in 1963, that Primo Levi was noticed, and that questo E a uomo was its place and was translated into many languages.

The account

If it is a man tells the experiment of the death camps of the Juifs, lived by the author, during the Second world war. He explains starting from his daily newspaper in the camp, the fight and the organization for the survival of the prisoners. Throughout this account, Primo Levi shows the horrors of the dehumanization of the camps.

This book includes/understands many quotations and recalls of the Divine comedy of Dante: where Dante goes down in the new hells before finding the paradise, Primo Levi is inserted in the horror of this concentration camp.

This book is regarded as one of best testimonys on the Shoah, because contrary to other accounts, Primo Levi does not tell the life of the camps in a linear way but explains it on a tone neutral and dépassionné almost with the manner of a sociologist.

The author is stopped in December 1943, in Italy, whereas it began from the activities from resistant, in a group very little organized. He is sent to Auschwitz, in a camp of work. He escapes from accuracy from the selection which led to pure and simple elimination. From its account release humiliation, the loss of human dignity that the Nazis subjected the Jews. He explains the role of the kapos which are in fact of the prisoners of common right, selected for their violence. He explains also the hiérachies inside the camps, the " système" of internal promotion, the combine and thus why certain prisoners could survive the " Lager" several years whereas the majority died there in a few months.

Its testimony is also marked by this fear of the cold, the tough hunger, of the complete satisfying of the prisoners for weakest of enter them. In the camp, solidarity was completely absent.

Fortunately, thanks to its formation of Chemist and primarily to its chance (according to Primo Levi), it will be more protected place. Patient of the Scarlet fever to the evacuation of the camps by the Nazis, it thus escaped with terrible the steps of the hunger , and will organize with 2 other still valid comrades the survival of sound " Block" with the infirmary, where it will spend its last days before the release of the camp by the Russian .

An appendix was added in 1976 to certain editions of If it is a man , where Primo Levi tries to answer the recurring questions raised at the time of its conferences.

Poem placed forward of If it is a man

You who live in all quietude

Bien with the heat in your houses,

You which find the evening while returning

the put table and of the friendly faces,

Considérez if it is a man

Who that which pains in the mud,

Which does not know rest,

Which fights for a chunk of bread,

Which dies for yes for not.

Considérez if it is a woman

Who that which lost her name and its hair

And until the force to remember,

empty eyes and the cold center

Like a frog in winter.

do not forget that was,

Non, do not forget it:

Engrave these words in your heart,

Pensez there on your premise, in the street,

By laying down you, while raising you;

Répétez them with your children,

Or that your house collapses,

That the disease overpowers you,

That your children are diverted you.

Notes and references of the article

Random links:

Battle of the Sum | Juhel II of Mayenne | Sonata da chiesa | Lucie Kuhlmann | Lange Antares 20th