This is Levi's memoir of his imprisonment in Auschwitz, where he was sent as a young Italian Jewish chemist in 1944. He describes the camp's daily routines, hunger, labour and the slow stripping away of identity, as well as moments of solidarity and small acts of decency. Levi writes with restraint and precision, more as an observer and witness than as an accuser. The book asks what remains of a person when dignity is systematically attacked. It is regarded as one of the most important accounts of the Holocaust.
Quotes
A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.
I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.
In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: "to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away."