A review by jorsie
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

4.0

"This time last year I was a free man: an outlaw but free, I had a name and a family, I had an eager and restless mind, an agile and healthy body. I used to think of many, far-away things: of my work, of the end of the war, of good and evil, of the nature of things and of the laws which govern human actions; and also of the mountains, of singing and loving, of music, of poetry. I had an enormous, deep-rooted, foolish faith in the benevolence of fate; to kill and to die seemed extraneous literary things to me. My days were both cheerful and sad, but I regretted them equally, they were all full and positive; the future stood before me as a great treasure. Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold; I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself."

This book was devastating. Primo Levi's devastation was heartbreaking. He understood his circumstances. He could see and observe and feel and experience and remember and explain what was being done to him, but he couldn't make sense of it. Hier ist kein warum ("Here there is no why"). I am at a loss for words. We are fortunate to have Levi's.