If This Is a Man

Is that a man? (Se questo è un uomo ) Primo Levi ( 1919-1987 ) autobiographical account of his eleven-month internment in Auschwitz III Monowitz ( 1944-45 ), from which he could be freed as one of the few survivors. The book was written 1945-1947. Due to the objectivity of the narrative, is dispensed with in the both to judgments and to explicit expressions of emotion, the work of other autobiographical Holocaust novels differs.

Formation and development

Levi explained that he had written the book from an oppressive inner impulse. It was indeed gone to him not to have any retribution: rather, he did not feel the need weiterzuerzählen his experience to help their fellow human beings participate in his fate. For this first pulse of the first designs were created, which over time have developed a second urge: Levi gradually realized the need not only to describe the experience, but also to understand. For this second need to have gradually occurred after new, expanded versions of the text.

After a failed publication of a new edition of Einaudi (1958 ) was a success. The book was translated into several languages. Levi had a lasting influence on his experiences in Auschwitz. The writing process, therefore, continued: In 1962, La tregua, the respite; The novel describes the long time between the liberation of Auschwitz and his return home. In 1986, Levi's factory I sommersi ei Salvati (Eng. The Drowned and the Saved ), which took up the theme of the camp again.

Topics

Levi alternates his experience report with the text which mainly analytically describe life in the camp: The Society of prisoners is to be explained in their group dynamics from a more objective, almost scientific point of view. A major role is played by the question of the skills and the scams that are absolutely necessary to keep you as a prisoner retains at least a chance of medium-term survival. Furthermore, it is explicitly stated to the change of the prisoners after the internment: The struggle to survive some basic ethical principles must be switched off temporarily.

A significant emphasis has also the description of the linguistic landscape in Auschwitz, which is compared with the Tower of Babel. The prisoners form a linguistically mixed; In addition to the individual languages ​​of the prisoners also an important camp jargon has emerged, which serves as intercultural communication and describe its words life in the camp pictorially.

Content

The action is directed not strictly according to the chronological order of events. Levi stresses that he has not invented anything of the described events.

The journey of the narrator begins in the transit camp Fossoli. The prisoners are stacked from there under inhumane conditions in the wagons of a train and deported to the German Reich. Many of them die on the trip.

In Auschwitz, Levi knows not initially that the other prisoners can recognize its arrival and its origin by the tattooed number that he carries. The newcomer will need to understand that such a figure not permit any further interpretations: Because he is the prisoner No. 174 517 the camp, however, has only a few tens of thousands of seats, it should be obvious that most people who were in the concentration camp, have already been murdered or otherwise died: The Primo gets from a group of Jews explains. These prisoners hide a certain disrespect for Levi not because he "only" an Italian Jew, and thus their language, Yiddish, not controlled.

All too soon the newcomer must know new vital rules: One should not ask questions, but do so as if they had understood everything; the extreme importance of common objects such as shoes and spoon must never be underestimated, otherwise death is fast approaching.

There is no shortage of storage in the isolated examples of solidarity: Primo is often hopelessly overwhelmed by Body ago, but the prisoner Resnyk assist with the heavy work he has to do initially. There are (rare) also days when there is enough to eat. Such experiences have an effect on the prisoners but depressing: Once they are satisfied, the semblance of normalcy, the prisoners recalls the years she spent at home, and thus to thoughts that they normally have to displace in hard everyday forced.

There are a number of scarce goods such as Fabric: why are taken from prisoner coats before the day of the " wash swap " rags to otherwise exploit the material (eg, as an association ). To avoid this possible, the authorities collect this wash in a very irregular time intervals in order to repair it and disinfect. Substance is used instead of money on the black market as exchange goods: one suspects, for any reason, that a linen swap takes place soon, breaking the price of the substances on the black market together soon, which is not rare to worry and speculation raises.

The description of the career of three fellow sufferers in Auschwitz points to the factors that can make the difference between life and death. The exemplary way to die is easy to explain: Those who adhere to the Official Rules will soon die of hunger or exhaustion; those people who are predetermined to an early disappearance are called Moslems. Those who want to survive, however, have to bend the rules or get a place in the sun, for example, by being appointed Kapo or otherwise receives a specific task. Ironically, such a lot rescues the young Levi, who is allowed to work as a chemist in the lab later, which it most likely saves before the tragic fate of a Mussulman. What tasks Levi must pursue in the chemistry laboratory, but is not betrayed.

A kind of diary serves as the final chapter. Germany will soon be occupied by the enemy forces. The arrival of the Red Army, which had been repeatedly predicted in compellingly very far future, indented head over heels in more detail. That is why the Nazis want to evacuate the concentration camps and use the still usable labor elsewhere. Such a move for these inmates is organized. Primo does not yet know that this fellow sufferers will almost invariably lose their lives during their impending death march. A rescue is, however, provide only for people who can not be evacuated. This is the case in Primo, because it is admitted that day because of scarlet fever still in the hospital (KB ) and can not follow suit. The remaining Auschwitz inmates help themselves as they can, and experience on 27 January 1945, the liberation by the Soviets.

Reception and Levis statements about the novel

Levis novel found a wide echo: Often questions were put to him, to which he also publicly took a stand:

• Reader asked why Levi refrain in the book to any judgments. In fact, hardly any hatred towards his tormentors is clear in the novel. Levi explained his choice in an attempt to stay with a rational approach: it lies ultimately up to the reader to form his own judgment. In a letter to the translator of the first German edition, he also stated he felt no hatred against the Germans. He could the people while still not understand: But precisely for this reason he hope from German readers feedback.

• The author was also asked about the causes of the Nazi anti-Semitism, since this question is not raised in the novel. Then he said, such a kind of racism is to be seen in a broader context: There go his opinion generally to the hostility to otherness, a hostility so that otherwise could occur again and again also.

The work today is considered a classic of world literature. It was taken about the list of one hundred books of the century, the daily newspaper Le Monde or the book of the 1000 books.

Reference to other literary texts

Is that a man? contains some deliberate references to classic works of world literature.

• The chapter Al di qua del bene e del male ( this world of good and evil ) is an allusion to the work of Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. Levi factor distinguishing it from Nietzsche, by representing the people in his wretched condition.

• Numerous references are made ​​to Dante's Divina Commedia. The writing above the entrance - Work Sets You Free - compared for example with the inscription on the gate to hell: Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l' etterno dolore, per me si va tra la gente perduta ( by me - that through this door - you go into a city of sorrow, through me you go into the eternal pain, through me you go to the forlorn people ). The trip to Auschwitz is thus linked to the literary motif of the " journey to the afterlife ."

• Still in the context of the Divine Comedy is the infirmary where Levi is temporarily admitted ( the Ka - Be), compared to the limbo. It is about the part of hell ( limbo ), where neither good nor evil prevails. In the infirmary is the narrator, temporarily does not have to work a respite.

German -language editions

• Levi, Primo, Se questo è un uomo, 1947, new edition 1958 ( German This Is a Man, trans v. Heinz Riedt, Fischer, Frankfurt / M 1961? . Edition Hanser, Munich, 1987, dtv 1992, ISBN 3-423 -11561-0 )
• Levi, Primo, If This Is a Man / The Truce. Translated by Robert Picht, Barbara Picht, Heinz Riedt, Hanser Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23744-5.