Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi (1919 – 1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, partisan, and writer whose testimony stands as a pinnacle of Holocaust literature. In 1943, following the German occupation of northern Italy, Levi joined an anti-fascist partisan group in the Val d'Aosta. Betrayed and captured by fascist militia in December 1943, he was deported to Auschwitz Monowitz (Buna) in February 1944.

His training as a chemist and sheer fortune enabled him to survive eleven months in the camp until liberation by the Red Army in January 1945. In 1947, Levi published *Se questo è un uomo* (If This Is a Man / Survival in Auschwitz), an extraordinarily calm, forensic analysis of the systematic dehumanization of prisoners. Throughout masterpieces including *The Periodic Table* and *The Drowned and the Saved*, Levi explored the 'gray zone' of moral complicity, warning humanity that 'it happened, therefore it can happen again'.