Primo Levi
| Famous as | Writer, Chemist |
| Born on | 31 July 1919 |
| Born in | Turin, Italy |
| Died on | 11 April 1987 |
| Nationality | Italy |
Primo Levi Childhood
Primo Levi was born on 31 July 1919 in Turin at Corso Re Umberto
75, Italy in a liberal Jewish family. Levi’s father Cesare worked in a
manufacturing firm Ganz for which he had to travel abroad to Hungary,
which was the Headquarter of Ganz. Levi’s mother Ester, also known as
Rina, was a pianist and spoke great French. Levi’s parents were great book
lovers. Primo lived in the apartment which his mother received as a
wedding gift from her father all his life. Levi’s little sister was born
in 1921 with whom Levi remained closely attached throughout his life.
Levi was enrolled in the Felice Rignon primary school in Turin in 1925.
Levi was a soft spoken and shy kid who did extremely well in his
studies. Levi’s school records show his long absence from school during
which Levi was home tutored by Emilia Glauda and then by Marisa Zini,
daughter of philosopher Zino Zini.
Youth
Levi was enrolled in Massimo d'Azeglio Royal Gymnasium in 1930. He
was possibly the youngest, shortest and the cleverest boy in the class.
He was greatly bullied in his school. It was in August 1932 when Levi
sang at the local synagogue in Turin, ‘Bar Mitzvah’ (which is the Jewish
custom of celebrating a boy’s reaching of 13 years of age and thus
portraying responsibility for their actions). In 1933 Levi joined the
young Italian Fascist movement, “Avanguardisti” like his fellow Italian
schoolboys. While participating in the movement Levi avoided rifle
movements to take part in skiing. In July 1934 Levi was 14 years old
when he appeared for his exams for the ‘Massimo d'Azeglio liceo
classico’, a Lyceum (sixth form) specialising in the classics. He got
admitted to the secondary school in autumn. Levi’s school had many anti-fascist teachers who were famous in their fields. Levi got bullied in the secondary school but he found 6 other Jewish boys in his school. While coming upon reading
“Concerning the Nature of Things” by Sir William Bragg, Levi got hooked
to Chemistry and desired of becoming a chemist. In 1937 Levi completed
his matriculation. A week before, his matriculation exams, Levi was
summoned by the Italian Royal Navy for ignoring the Italian royal
call-up earlier. Levi suffered a lot and he had to sit for his Italian
paper exam again due to anti-Jewish marking and the impact of the
accusation on him. He passed his exams in the summer end and in October
1937 he enrolled himself at the University of Turin, to study chemistry.
In February the following year (1938) Levi graduated and took the
full-time chemistry course.
Fascist Italy was not completely anti-Jewish during this time.
Italian Jews had started joining the Fascist movement in small numbers.
Minor systematic discrimination towards Italian Jews started off in the
1930s. In July 1938 ‘Manifesto of the Race’ was announced which stated
that only one pure Italian race existed and they all descended from
Aryans. In September 1938 the Fascist government introduced racial laws
which started being severe on Jews and prohibited them from taking
formal education in state sponsored schools. However, the ones who had
already enrolled themselves were allowed to continue with the studies.
New Jewish students were not allowed in Universities but since Levi had
matriculated a year ago he could continue with his degree course. In
1939 Levi started mountain hiking. Hiking made Levi release his
frustrations of life, war and struggles. In June 1940 Italy declared war
against Britain and France. Air raids took place in Turin two days
later. Levi pursued his education in the midst of bombardments.
Career and Hardships
Levi started finding it difficult to continue his graduation
because of the growing anti-Semitic law implementation and growing
Fascist violence. Levi could not find a supervisor for his graduation
thesis on ‘Walden inversion, a study of the asymmetry of the carbon
atom’. However, Levi fortunately came across Dr. Nicolò Dallaporta under
whom he completed his graduation degree in the summer of 1941. Not only
did Levi have full marks and merit but he also had submitted additional
theses on x-rays and electrostatic energy. Such was the intensity of
hatred towards the Jewish community that Levi’s degree certificate bore
the remark, “of Jewish race”. Levi was unsuccessful in finding an
appropriate permanent position after his graduation just because he was a
Jew.
In December 1941 Levi secretly got a job at asbestos mine at San
Vittore where he was made to extract nickel from the mine spoil. Levi
found great satisfaction in finding a suitable Chemist’s job. Levi
worked under a false name with false papers. In March 1942, Levi he lost
his father due to which he had to leave Turin and his mining. He went
to Milan in June 1942 where he found work in a Swiss firm of A Wander
Ltd on a project to extract an anti-diabetic from vegetable matter. Levi
was helped by a fellow student at Turin University to get this job.
Levi got the job as Swiss companies did not follow racial laws but
Levi’s project went nowhere.
Italy was going through several changes when in September 1943 the
new Italian government under Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice
with the Allies and the former leader Benito Mussolini was released
from imprisonment by the Germans only to be installed as a puppet ruler
of the Italian Social Republic in German-occupied northern Italy. Levi
returned to Turin only to find his mother and sister seeking refuge in
their holiday home La Saccarello
in the hills outside Turin. In order to hide themselves Levi and his
family went off to Saint-Vincent in the Aosta Valley located in northern
Italy. Levi’s family was soon pursued by the authorities, which made
them move up to the hillside to Amay in the Colle di Joux. Amay was an
area thronged by Allied prisoners of war and refugees trying to escape
the Germans because of its close route to Switzeralnd.
Italian liberation and movements of resistance to German genocide
started growing at this time. Levi joined fellow comrades and took to
the foothills of the Alps and in October 1943 in order to join the
liberal Giustizia e Libertà partisan movement. Having no training and
combat skills Levi, along with his aides, was soon taken captive by the
Fascist militia. Levi was about to be shot and was told that he would be
shot and identified as an Italian resistance soldier when he confessed
of being a Jew and was sent to an internment camp for Jews at Fossoli
near Modena. Levi’s written records suggest that as long as Fossoli was
under Italian control, he was not harmed. Levi had written, “We were
given, on a regular basis, a food ration destined for the soldiers”.
Levi further wrote, “and at the end of January 1944, we were taken to
Fossoli on a passenger train. Our condition in the camp was quite good.
There was no talk of executions and the atmosphere was quite calm. We
were allowed to keep the money we had brought with us and to receive
money from the outside. We worked in the kitchen in turn and performed
other services in the camp. We even prepared a dining room, a rather
sparse one, I must admit”.
German Control
As Fossoli went into German control, Jews were gathered for being
deported. On 21 February 1944 Jewish camp inmates in Fossoli were
transported in twelve cramped cattle trucks to Monowitz and taken to one
of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex
(Levi’s record number was 174,517). Levi remained for 11 long months
inside this camp before being liberated by the Red Army on 18 January
1945. Levi was among the very few (20) alive camp inmates who came out
of the camp that had 650 Italian Jews in Levi’s shipment.
Levi utilised his stay in the concentration camp by reading German
publications on chemistry thus gaining German language skills. Levi gave
away his bread to a more experienced Italian prisoner as a payment for
German lessons and orientation in Auschwitz. Levi’s academic
qualifications and professional experiences made him get a job offer as
an assistant in IG Farben's Buna Werke laboratory that was intended to
produce synthetic rubber in mid-November 1944. Levi got affected by
scarlet fever at the time his camp was to be liberated by the Red Army
for which he was taken to the camp's sanatorium (camp hospital). It was
on 18 January 1945 when there was a hurried attempt of evacuation of the
camps by The Schutzstaffel which was a major paramilitary organization
under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. This evacuation resulted due to
the approaching Red Army of Soviet Union power. Camp inmates were forced
to walk in the long death march in spite of their severe illnesses
resulting in the death of most of the inmates. Levi survived this
because of his illness. Levi was liberated on 27 January 1945 but
reached Turin not before 19 October 1945. Levi travelled on a circuitous
route from Poland, through Bielorussia, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary,
Austria and Germany to reach his homeland in Turin through railroad.
As a Writer
Levi returned home in a ghastly state being ill and mal-fed. He
took several months to recover from his physical and mental trauma.
Having no work in Turin Levi tried to find work in Milan. While making
frequent train journeys he started to tell people stories about his time
at Auschwitz. At a Jewish New Year party in 1946 he met Lucia Morpurgo
who offered to teach him to dance with whom Levi fell in love. It was
during this time that he started writing poetry about his experiences in
the Lager. On 21 January Levi took up a work at DUCO, a Du Pont Company
paint factory, outside Turin during which Levi got his time to shape
his writing career as the train service out to the factory was so
limited that Levi could stay in the factory dormitory during the week
and carry on with his writing work unhindered. It was during this time
and in this place that Levi drafted
‘If This Is a Man’ for the first time. Levi described his 11 months
from February 21 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945 in the
German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland in this book which was
completed by Levi in December 1946. ‘If This Is a Man’ found trouble in
getting published but Levi kept on finding publishers and finally found
one in De Silva, who printed 2,500 copies of the book, 1,500 of which
were sold, mostly in his home town of Turin, Italy.
Levi completed the manuscript for ‘If This Is a Man’ on 22 December 1946. He was helped by Lucia in editing the narrative of the book and the couple found great love in each other. In January 1947 Levi took his manuscript to various small publishers but the openness of the book and zero experience as a writer made Levi find no takers.
Levi found a publisher in Franco Antonicelli, through a friend of
his sister’s but Antonicelli was also an amateur who had supported Levi
for being an active anti-Fascist himself. Levi left DUCO in the end of
June in 1947 to team up with an old friend Alberto Salmoni to run a
chemical consultancy. Levi and Salmoni carried on their work from the
top floor of Salmoni’s parents’ house and together they made a lot of
money by making and supplying stannous chloride for mirror makers
delivering the unstable chemical by bicycle across the city. All these
experiences found place in Levi’s books in later years.
Levi married Lucia in September 1947 and on 11 October 1947 Levi’s
‘If This Is a Man’ was published with a print run of 2000 copies. After
Lucia got pregnant in April 1948 Levi decided to leave his Chemist’s job
and agreed to go and work for Federico Accatti in the family paint
business which traded under the name SIVA. In October 1948 Levi’s first
child, his daughter Lisa, was born.
It was not before 1958 that Einaudi publishers (who had initially
rejected Levi’s manuscript) published a revised work of Levi’s book. In
1958 itself Levi was helped by Stuart Woolf to come out with an English
translation of ‘If This Is a Man’. In 1959 ‘If This Is a Man’ was
published in the UK by Orion Press. In 1959 Heinz Riedt carried out the
publication of ‘If This Is a Man’ in German.
In early 1961 Levi started working on ‘The Truce’ which was
published in 1963. In 1963 Levi received his first annual Premio
Campiello literary award. In 1964 Levi collaborated on a radio play
based upon ‘If This Is a Man’ and in 1966 he took part in a theatre
production. ‘Storie naturali’ (Natural Histories) was published in 1966
and ‘Vizio di forma’ (Structural Defect) got published in 1971 which
were later released in English as ‘The Sixth Day and other Tales’.
In 1975 Levi brought his poetry collection, under the title
‘L’osteria di Brema’ (The Bremen Beer Hall), published in English as
‘Shema: Collected Poems’. Levi published his very famous and widely
appreciated memoirs, ‘Il sistema periodico’ (The Periodic Table) in 1975
and ‘Lilit e altri racconti’ (Moments of Reprieve) in 1978.
Levi devoted himself to full fledged writing after retiring as a
part-time consultant at the SIVA paint factory in 1977. In 1978 Levi’s
‘La chiave a stella’ (published in the US in 1986 as The Monkey's Wrench
and in the UK in 1987 as The Wrench) was written and published. ‘The
Wrench’ won Levi a great enthusiastic audience in Italy and also won him
the Strega Prize in 1979. In 1984 Levi published his novels, ‘If Not
Now, When?’ and ‘The Monkey's Wrench’.
Views and Ideas
Levi wrote about his experiences of Nazi terror and horror. Levi
wanted to tell the world all about the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the
Jewish people. In March 1985 while writing the introduction to the
re-publication of the autobiography of Rudolf Höß who was commandant of
Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to 1943 Levi wrote, “It's filled
with evil.....and reading it is agony”.
Levi was in a state of shock to witness rampant revisionist
attitudes which persistently tried to change by rewriting the history of
the camps as less horrific which is presently known as ‘Holocaust
denial.’ Levi said and believed that Nazi attempts of Jewish
annihilation were a horrific historical act. Levi was of the view that
the Nazi acts were highly organized and mechanized and aimed at erasing
the Jews completely.
Death
Levi had allegedly died falling from the interior landing of his
third-story apartment in Turin to the ground floor below on 11 April
1987. According to witnesses it was a case of suicide.
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Primo Levi Timeline: | ||||
1919 - Primo Levi was born on 31 July
1921 - Levi’s little sister was born with whom Levi remained closely attached throughout his life
1925 - Levi was enrolled in the Felice Rignon primary school in Turin
1930 - Levi was enrolled in Massimo d'Azeglio Royal Gymnasium
1930s - Minor systematic discrimination towards Italian Jews started off
1932 - In August when Levi had already shifted to
Talmud Torah School in Turin where he sang at the local synagogue for
his ‘Bar Mitzvah’
1933 - Levi joined the young Italian Fascist movement, “Avanguardisti” movement like his fellow Italian schoolboys
1934 - In July Levi was 14 years old when he
appeared for his exams for the ‘Massimo d'Azeglio liceo classico’, a
Lyceum (sixth form) specialising in the classics
1937 - Levi completed his matriculation
1937 – In October he enrolled himself at the University of Turin, to study chemistry
1938 - In February Levi graduated and took on to continue the full-time chemistry course
1938 - In July ‘Manifesto of the Race’ was
announced which stated that only one pure Italian race existed and they
all descended from Aryans
1938 - In September the Fascist government
introduced racial laws which started being severe on Jews and prohibited
them from taking formal education in state sponsored schools
1939 - Levi started mountain hiking
1940 - In June Italy declared war against Britain and France
1941 - He completed his graduation degree in the summer
1941 - In December Levi secretly got a job at asbestos mine at San Vittore where he was made to extract nickel from the mine spoil
1942 – In March Levi was working in the mine when he lost his father
1942 – He went to Milan in June where he found
work in a Swiss firm of A Wander Ltd on a project to extract an
anti-diabetic from vegetable matter
1943 - Italy was going through several changes
when in September the new Italian government under Marshal Pietro
Badoglio signed an armistice with the Allies and the former leader
Benito Mussolini was released from imprisonment by the Germans only to
be installed as a puppet ruler of the Italian Social Republic in
German-occupied northern Italy
1943 - Levi joined fellow comrades and took to the
foothills of the Alps and in October he joined the liberal Giustizia e
Libertà partisan movement
1944 - On 21 February Jewish camp inmates in
Fossoli were transported in twelve cramped cattle trucks to Monowitz and
taken to one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration
camp complex (Levi’s record number was 174,517)
1945 – On 18 January there was a hurried attempt
of evacuation of the camps by The Schutzstaffel which was a major
paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party
1945 - Levi was liberated on 27 January
1945 – He reached Turin not before 19 October
1946 - Levi completed the manuscript for ‘If This Is a Man’ on 22 December
1947 - Levi left DUCO in the end of June to team up with an old friend Alberto Salmoni to run a chemical consultancy
1947 - Levi married Lucia in September
1947 – On 11 October Levi’s ‘If This Is a Man’ was published with a print run of 2000 copies
1948 - After Lucia got pregnant in April Levi
decided to leave his Chemist’s job and agreed to go and work for
Federico Accatti in the family paint business which traded under the
name SIVA
1948 - In October Levi’s first child, his daughter Lisa, was born
1958 - It was not before 1958 that Einaudi
publishers (who had initially rejected Levi’s manuscript) published a
revised work of Levi’s book
1958 - Levi was helped by Stuart Woolf to come out with an English translation of ‘If This Is a Man’
1959 - ‘If This Is a Man’ was published in the UK by Orion Press
1959 - Heinz Riedt carried out the publication of ‘If This Is a Man’ in German
1961 - In early 1961 Levi started working on ‘The Truce’
1963 – ‘The Truce’ was published
1963 - Levi received his first annual Premio Campiello literary award
1964 - Levi collaborated on a radio play based upon ‘If This Is a Man’
1966 – He took part in a theatre production based on his play
1966 - ‘Storie naturali’ (Natural Histories) was published
1971 - ‘Vizio di forma’ (Structural Defect) got published which were later released in English as ‘The Sixth Day and other Tales’
1975 - Levi brought his poetry collection, under
the title ‘L’osteria di Brema’ (The Bremen Beer Hall), published in
English as ‘Shema: Collected Poems’
1975 - Levi published his very famous and widely appreciated memoirs, ‘Il sistema periodico’ (The Periodic Table)
1978 – He published his second memoir ‘Lilit e altri racconti’ (Moments of Reprieve)
1984 Levi published his novels, ‘If Not Now, When?’ and ‘The Monkey's Wrench’
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