Responding to Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz

In Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Levi states that, “We believe, rather, that the only conclusion to be drawn is that in the face of driving necessity and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are reduced to silence” (87). He writes this memoir in part because he no longer feels the “driving necessity and physical disabilities,” having escaped Auschwitz, he must not be silent any longer. Like many Holocaust survivors, Levi appears to write his memoir in order to share his experiences with the reader and in his great details, he seems to put together his past, devoting himself to his writing and only dying naturally after he has left his completed memoir.

In many Holocaust memoirs, the authors have chosen not to include lavish emotion and grief; Levi, however, does express his emotions in each situation. Instead of expressions of emotion, other works often include a plethora of detailed, verbal exchanges between characters while Levi’s memoir includes only one chapter in which he has an in-depth exchange with another person.

Chapter 11: The Canto of Ulysses is the chapter in which Levi quotes Dante’s The Divine Comedy to Pikolo in a chance moment of freedom insisting, “He will understand – today I feel capable of so much. Who is Dante? What is the Comedy? That curious sensation of novelty which one feels if one tries to explain briefly what is the divine Comedy. How the Inferno is divided up, what are its punishments. Virgil is Reason, Beatrice is Theology” (112). In this exchange, Levi is suddenly filled with energy and the desire to give Pikolo this knowledge as quickly as possible because the opportunity could easily escape them later on; despite the mundane quality of day to day life in the Lager, death was always imminent. An important line quoted from Dante, which Levi wants to make sure Pikolo understands is, “as pleased Another” (115). Not only does this defy the Lager motto of caring for oneself first, but he also capitalizes “Another,” and in doing so, he personifies other human beings, giving them human qualities which had been taken from them by the Nazis’ “useless cruelties”.

Lastly, “the sea” becomes a metaphor for life: “The open sea: Pikolo has traveled by sea, and knows what it means: it is when the horizon closes in on itself, free, straight ahead and simple, and there is nothing but the smell of the sea; sweet things, ferociously far away” (113). When Pikolo traveled the sea in his life before the labor camp, he understood it as “free, straight ahead and simple”; suddenly, however, his life has become the smell and sights of death and “sweet things,” like what he knew in his previous life, are out of reach.