Auschwitz Testimonies —— 1945-1986

This is the first book I've read on the holocaust by a holocaust survivor. As you can probably imagine, it is very affecting. The book is a collection of writings by Primo Levi and Leonardo de Benedetti, both Italian Jews who were captured in Italy and shipped to Auschwitz in 1944. In their train of 650, 96 men were selected to work and 24 women were. The rest were sent to the gas chambers immediately. After a year, of the 96 men only 12 survived and of the women only 8 or so. The book is a collection of writings, ordered chronologically from 1945 to 1986. Several are testimonies, witness accounts of transport to the camp and life and circumstances in the work camp. These accounts are written in a dry and scientific matter--the authors are clearly trying to remove themselves and their emotions from the account and offer a straight forward, factual testimony which is incredibly moving, perhaps because the authors describe such horrific circumstances that the reader knows they actually lived through in such detached scientific prose. As the years go by, there are fewer testimonies and more writings about Auschwitz that have more emotion to them, including a response to a 12 year old girl who wants to know the "truth" about the camps; a plea to his generation to keep the memory of the camps and extermination alive; a tribute to his friend Leonardo Benedetti upon his death, among others. The whole collection is very thought provoking. It's amazing to think people were complaining in 1960 (only 15 years after the end of WWII!) that survivors like Levi needed to focus on more positive things and not constantly talk about the attempted extermination of a race of people! His justification for his focus is wonderfully well written, though still shocking to me that he felt the need to write it at all. Overall, it's a great read. Most of the selections are pretty short. The afterword is about 30 pages and offers more analysis of the writings and Levi's motivations which adds context to a lot of the previous writings. I think different people will be more affected by different writings. The ones that hit me the most were when he talked about how German industry profited from the slave labor of prisoners and how industry was complicit in the mass slaughter, providing industrial ovens to burn all the bodies and poison to kill massive numbers of people. In one brief moment of levity, Levi mentions how the makers of Zyklon B, the poison used in the gas chambers which was designed to kill rats in ships holds, never once wondered if there was some massive rat infestation in the country if the government was buying such quantities of rat poison. Of course, the company wondered, and probably suspected or flat out knew what the poison was being used for but it didn't matter enough not to sell the poison. Anyways, I highly recommend this book.

Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, was deported to the Monowitz camp at Auschwitz in early 1944 and was liberated by the invading Soviet army in early 1945. It took him a year to make his way back to Italy and resume his career as a chemist. In 1946, Levi wrote his first memoir of his Auschwitz experiences, If This Is a Man (called Survival in Auschwitz in the US), and continued to write novels and memoirs until his death in 1987. Along with Elie Weisel, Levi is renowned for the devastating clarity of his prose, which manages to convey the horrors of the Holocaust without resorting to overt emotion. This book, Auschwitz Testimonies, is not a memoir or historical analysis of Auschwitz. It is a collection of documents not intended for publication—or I should say not intended to be marketed. For example, it contains Levi’s depositions for the trials of camp commandant Höss and camp doctor Mengele, a report for the Soviets on sanitary arrangements at the camp, and many 4-5 page snippets of recollections of things like how prisoners secretly managed a bit of their own internal camp discipline. This collection should be of particular interest to experienced readers of Holocaust history and those who are familiar with Primo Levi’s other work. For those who have not previously read Levi and/or who have not read much about the Holocaust, I would suggest beginning with Levi’s first book or his excellent The Drowned and the Saved.

Primo Levi's "Auschwitz Testimonies" is more a collection of documents and articles than a straightforward narrative authored by Levi and Leonardo de Benedetti over the period 1945-1986. As a witness to the holocaust, Levi's account is critically important, especially in these days of the rise of the so-called alt-right and antisemitism. Primo Levi was an Italian partisan in 1944-45 when he was captured and sent to Auschwitz. I had never thought much about the fate of these left-wing partisans opposing Mussolini, fascist rule, and German occupation, as most historical accounts do not dwell on this asymmetrical warfare but rather the movement of Allied and German armies. This is primary source material for the holocaust, written by two of its survivors. They are all short documents, and you can read them in a few minutes, though you might ruminate over their content for a long while after. They are not accounts you've likely seen before, which made them all the more interesting. There are mistakes to be sure, noted in the introduction by Robert S.C. Gordon, author of "The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010" (2012). The topics range from the seemingly mundane, "Report on the Sanitary and Medical Organization of the Monwitz Concentration Camp for Jews (Auschwitz - Upper Silesia)" to the "Denunciation against Dr. Joseph Mengele" and "Deposition for the Eichmann Trial." There is also the "Deposition" of Primo Levi dating to c. 1946 and an account of his own capture, "That Train to Auschwitz" dating to 1979. One of the documents I found most interesting was Levi's "Letter to a Fascist Daughter Who Wants to Know the Truth" (1959). Here, Levi explains in a no-holds-barred manner much needed today, and to a 12-year-old girl no less, that fascism was evil, that the holocaust really happened, that the photographs that so concerned her represent the truth, that silence is a mistake and a crime (note to today's Nazis). Levi (and who better than one who experienced the things so many would love to deny today) closes by telling her, chillingly I think, given the ethnic nationalist forces unleashed by Donald Trump's presidency, of the "reserves of ferocity lie in the depths of the human spirit, and what dangers, today as yesterday, threaten our civilization." This is an important book, and it should be required reading in schools. It is short (just under 200 pages) but powerful, and does not require photographs to preach a powerful lesson, that these horrible deeds must never be forgotten.

This is not an easy book to read. I've found it easier to handle in small doses. We all know about Auschwitz, Birkenau and the like. Terrible places, places where man's inhumanity to man reached new depths of depravity. This collection of depositions, testimonies etc is from people who were there. Who saw it with their own eyes. Felt it in their in their own bodies. Faced it every day of their existence. The coldness and complete lack of the 'milk of human kindness' is overbearing. To think that people could do this to others, without batting an eyelid. There is a starkness and brutality about the words on the page. The writers tell it like it is, from experience. There is no sugar-coating, no making it more palatable for the reader. There is also a very black streak of humour that appears every so often. This only helps hit home the shock value of the words. Whether it's enlightenment about what went on in the camps - the heartless treatment, the soiled clothing and bedding, the complete lack of meaningful medical care, the handing and gassing with impunity - or details of the long marches when the Soviet Army was approaching, the human suffering and misery is all too real. People being summarily shot for no reason at all, or because of being tired or ill.The trying to hide the evidence of what they had been doing (they being the Germans). I say Germans, because there is a feeling that people went along with it, even if they were not Nazis themselves. I would recommend this book to everyone interested in history and the ability of man to remove himself from any sort of feeling or sensibility towards his fellow man. Or anyone interested in learning more - in detail - of what is told in TV documentaries and history magazines. This book makes it real. It brings it all to life. I suggest that you skip over the introduction, which does not lend anything to the book itself. It goes on for several pages too many, and becomes turgid in places. It refers to other writings and publications from the authors, but - personally - I thought it pointless. If anything, it should have been at the end of the book.

Primo Levi was a Jewish Italian engineer who ended up in Auschwitz and fortunately for him, and also for us, he didn't get killed as many others did. Primo later become an important recognized writer and left us and important testimony of his time in the camp: "If this is a man", which is a marvelous and splendidly written book, which everybody should read at least once in their lives. As for 'Auschwitz Testimonies: 1945-1986', it is and important document of day-to-day life that Primo Levi experienced during his time there. it is well written but it doesn't have the charm and the literary gravitas of 'If this is a man'.

'When you read a book, it may be entertaining or it may not, it may be informative or it may not, it may or may not be remembered or reread. As a writer about the deportation this is not enough for me... for as long as we live it is our duty to speak... to those who were not yet born, so that they can understand...' Primo Levi, in To Our Generation. Having encountered Levi's name many times whilst pursuing my interests in the history of WWII, when this came up on Vine I thought I'd have a look. This collection of articles, witness statements, lectures, speeches and sundry other writings, mainly by Primo Levi, but also by Leonardo de Benedetti, is hardly entertaining. It is very informative. But it's not the work of Levi the writer in the same way his more famous books are. This is drier, particularly the first piece, a report on hospital conditions at Monowitz, a satellite 'arbeitslager' (work camp) of Auschwitz. In an apt play on words the compilers of these texts have described Levi and de Benedetti's work collected here as 'bare witness'. It's unadorned facts, as they were perceived and later recalled by these two men, memories dredged up from under the most appallingly dehumanising conditions. Having a perhaps stronger than average interest in many threads of WWII history I found this a rewarding read. But I'd think it's perhaps a bit dry and fragmentary for the reader with what might be called a 'lay' interest. There's an inevitable degree of repetition in some of the documents, and - despite moments where emotional reactions seep through - it's quite forensic on the whole. That said, I haven't read any of Levi's more famous books. But I'd like to, now that I've read this. One thing that strikes me as both intriguing and worrying is that, unlike the post-war silence that Levi, de Benedetti and others helped break, on the subject of the Nazi programs of genocide, these days sometimes those who perhaps ought to know more about this subject are put off not by an absence of it as a subject, but by its near ubiquitous omnipresence. I have a military history buff friend who's more than once said he actively avoids 'holocaust' related material, because he finds it both depressing and overly familiar. Levi hopes his testimony will prevent such things happening again. Hmmm!? Looking at post-war history, from events in Russia and China, via American and UN involvement in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, to more recent developments in former Soviet-Bloc countries, I'd say the evidence isn't looking too hopeful.

Three things made me select this book, firstly my father is Polish, born in Katowice and I have visited Auschwitz recently for the first time. I had driven past it previously, but like when I lived near Belsen, I never felt that these are places to visit as a tourist or sight see, more of a place to visit as a pilgrim: soul opened and now closed to review this book. Primo Levi was an Italian who was incarcerated in Katowice camp as it was known towards the end of WW2. Initially he was commissioned by the Soviet occupation administration to compile a record of the conditions which the inmates endured during their incarceration; much of it is a series of snapshots of this huge facility; the overall camp was huge and part of it was also used to incarcerate POW, including British. This work is a collection of testimonies gained from a number of individuals. It isn't an easy read, but gives far more insight into the conditions which people were subjected to and would be a valuable adjunct for those who have visited, or have interest, into the tragedy that was the Holocaust and for those that it deny it occurred something to challenge their reasoning. Reading the elements regarding the care of the sick can only be described as extending the torture: rudimentary medical care with limited medicaments to extend life, with nursing care based upon nepotism, rather than competence was particularly disturbing and a complete anathema to those with a nursing vocation. In closing, may I say that my father was very honest in his recollection of what occurred across occupied Europe and the former Soviet Union at the time, having spent time in his native Poland before trekking across much of Ukraine, Russia, Turkey to join the Polish Army in Palestine - Continuing through Italy and the completion of his journey to eventually reside in the United Kingdom via France, rendered him a Francophobe until his death. His view was that Germany (as opposed to simply using the term 'Nazi's' to sanitise via time the role of the Germanic peoples ) had much to answer for the persecution of the Jews, Gypsy, Communists etc but so did many other people's who actively participated in ethnic cleansing on a huge scale and only "victory" saved them from infamy too.

I chose this book because I wanted to feel more informed about some of the encounters that people endured during the Second World War. Auschwitz is often mentioned in conversation but to actually focus some reading upon that particular location and to take onus on the experiences of those inhabitants in their own words (albeit translated) seemed fitting and an honest way to educate myself. This is a curious book to read, as by its very nature it is not covered in chapters per-se - but covers a chronology over several years and relays the stories of some of those who were liberated. I didn’t pay too much mind to the opening section, as I just wanted to jump straight into the core content which begins on page 19. At times it makes for difficult reading, not just because the stories contained within seem unimaginable to a sane person. I think this book is best absorbed in small doses. From the harrowing conditions of the various parts of the notorious camp itself, to the names of particular individuals working there, the book has a little piece of everything going so that you can pull together even just a hint at what life must have been like there. The lives of those liberated were torn apart and remained torn apart even years later as what they went through remained with them as the abuse and torture cannot simply be forgotten. It is a worthwhile book, and unconventional in its configuration, which helps to make it memorable. It is well-written and doesn’t oversell itself, remaining honest and true.