This is an interesting book about the experiences of a man held prisoner in a Nazi prison camp. He speaks of the hunger,the cold,and the way he carried himself through the ordeal. A good account but felt he could have described in more detail about what happened within the camp.

I started this book before i went to bed. I could not put it down. Even with the words written before me on paper I can only try to comprehend the horrors spoken of. I ended up spending most of the night reading this book and the rest thinking about what i'd just read. If one can say that everyone should read this book, then i think this is so. But i am sure that there are those who won't be able to handle the harsh truths written. I did find this book hard to put down and i am glad that i have read it.

This is a translation of Primo Levi's "Se questo è un uomo"- "If this is a man". Levi is a very erudite and poetic author, tackling some very dark subject matter, his years in Auschwitz. He shows how the Germans systematically and mercilessly reduced these prisoners (mostly Jews, but also criminals, prisoners-of-war, and others)to losing their humanity and almost becoming bestial in their fight for survival. Atrocities became commonplace, and some behaviors described are gruesome. A very illuminating and difficult book to get through, because of man's brutality towards his fellow man.

This is a pretty good book and provides an insight on what life was like in a concentration camp. The descriptions of some of the things the author experienced in the concentration camp along with the conditions were horrific. There was one chapter that was a little slow and dealt with the “selling/dealing” of food and other belongings that went on in the camp amongst the prisoners and outside civilians. The last chapter of the book was very interesting and provided a bittersweet ending. How some of these prisoners lasted 3 (and some even more) years in the concentration camp is amazing. Overall this book was good but I guess I expected a little more, none the less it was good read.

As I grow older, I realize that some of the most moving events in life are ones that take place in an instant. One of those moments for me was when I visited the concentration camp at Dachau when I was 16 years old. I will always remember the inhumanity mankind was capable of as I saw the photos of the prisoners at the museum and gawked at the “Arbeit Macht Frei” written in steel over a gate. To be honest, I had never heard of Primo Levi nor was I aware of this book, but when I found it, I was excited to hear a first hand account of a survivor’s experience in a German Concentration Camp. I was hoping to get a perspective on the holocaust that I did not see and feel at Dachau.

Primo Levi was young chemist from the Turin area of Italy. At the age of 24, Primo was captured by the Fascist Militia and was eventually deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp as an Italian Jew. There, he spent 11 months in the concentration camp until the camp was liberated by the Russian military in late January of 1945.

Survival In Auschwitz is a great book on the experience of surviving in a concentration camp. If you are looking for a book that provides details of bloody torture and beatings, this is not it. While the inhumane treatment and torture is everywhere in the book, it is not of the “blood and guts” variety that the modern generation may be used to after watching years of action movies. The author is incredibly detached when describing events that happen around the camp (the author describes that you have to do this to survive in such an unpredictable and harsh environment). Sometimes when the author is describing horrific events, it is as bland as describing what he had for breakfast that morning.

I found this to be an excellent book on life in a concentration camp. The author tells of the few good times in the camp such as being picked for indoor work detail or finding an abandoned pot of soup that yields an extra cup or two. The author tells of the lows such as watching friends, good men who are marched off to be killed. The book describes policies and politics amongst the prisoners. The entire book does lack emotion, but as I said before, the author explains emotions have no place in the camp. The only thing I disliked about the version of the book I read is that there were a number of languages used (German, French, Italian, and a few others). Many of the phrases were not translated into English. I was not always near a computer where I could Google the foreign phrases, so many times their meaning were lost to me.

Survival in Auschwitz is an excellent narrative of life in a German concentration camp. If you are interested in what it was like to live and survive in the camp, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a bloody, gory tale of how prisoners were treated and killed, then pass on this book. Overall, I highly recommend this book. It not only outlines how cruel mankind can be, but also demonstrates the crushing blows a person can take physically and mentally and still persevere.

This is a very powerful book of the author's own survival through the brutality of Auschwitz. It explains how the very system of the "labor camps" succeeded in de-humanizing the inhabitants, even to themselves. This was not light reading, but the book is short, so it does not take long to read.

Read this book,

This is the story of 10 months in the life of a 25 year old chemist who was deported to Auschwitz from Italy because he was of the Jewish race.

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Only used slightly for a research paper that I did. Great condition.

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