Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi (Turin, 31 July 1919- 11 April 1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, novels, collections of short stories, essays, and poems.

He graduated in Chemistry from the University of Turin in 1941 and two years later joined the anti-fascist resistance. He was captured and deported to Auschwitz, where he worked as a slave in an industrial plant. After the camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945 and after an odyssey through several Eastern European countries, he returned to Turin and published his first account of the extermination camps, Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man / US: The Reawakening).

His later biographical writings La tregua (The Truce, 1963) and I sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986) are reflections on the experience of horror. His other works include Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table), Se non ora, quando? (If Not Now, When?), Storie naturali (as Damiano Malabaila), La chiave a stella (The Wrench, 1978), Lilit e altri racconti (1978), La ricerca delle radici (The Search for Roots, 1981), and L' ultimo Natale di guerra (1984).