No, as I’ve hinted already, I have no regrets. I don’t believe I have wasted my time in managing a factory. My factory militanza—my compulsory and honorable service there—kept me in touch with the world of real things.◊
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Primo Levi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1919, and trained as a chemist. He was arrested as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance, and then deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Levi’s experience in the death camp and his subsequent travels through Eastern Europe are the subject of his two classic memoirs, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening (also available from Collier books), as well as Moments of Reprieve. In addition, he is the author of The Periodic Table, If Not Now, When?, which won the distinguished Viareggio and Campiello prizes when published in Italy in 1982, and most recently, The Monkeys Wrench. “The first thing that needs to be said about Primo Levi,” as John Gross remarked in The New York Times, “is that he might well have become a writer, and a very good writer, under any conditions; he is gifted and highly perceptive, a man with a lively curiosity, humor, and a sense of style.” Dr. Levi retired from his position as manager of a Turin chemical factory in 1977 to devote himself full-time to writing. He died in 1987.
Copyright
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Translated from Se quesio è un uomo copyright © 1958 by Giulio Einaudi editore S.pA. copyright © by The Orion Press
“A Conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth” copyright © 1986 Philip Roth
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Touchstone and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Survival in Auschwitz originally appeared in English under the title If This Is a Man.
First Collier Books Trade Edition 1993
First Touchstone Edition 1996
Manufactured in the United States of America
30 29 28 27 26 25
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levi, Primo.
[Se questo è un uomo. English]
Survival in Auschwitz: the Nazi assault on humanity/Primo Levi; translated from the Italian by Stuart Woolf.
p. cm.
Translation of: Se questo è un uomo.
Originally published: If this is a man.
1. Levi, Primo. 2. Auschwitz (Poland: Concentration camp). 3. World War, 1939-1945—Prisoners and prisons, German. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives, Italian. 3. Prisoners of war—Italy—Biography. 6. Prisoners of war— Poland—Biography. I. Levi, Primo. If this is a man. II. Title. III. Title: Se questo è un uomo. English. D805.P7L44I3 1993U
940.5472‘43094386—dcl9 86-13656 CIP
ISBN-13: 978-0-684-82680-6
ISBN-10: 0-684-82680-1