If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man ( ; United States title: Survival in Auschwitz) is a memoir by Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Monowitz) from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. Background to the memoir. Primo Levi was born in 1919 in Turin. His forebears were Piedmontese Jews. He studied chemistry at the University of Turin, graduating "summa cum laude" in 1941, notwithstanding  the restrictions imposed by Mussolini's racial laws. In 1942 he found a position with a Swiss drug company in Milan. With the German occupation of northern and central Italy in 1943, Levi joined a partisan group in Aosta Valley in the Alps. He was arrested in December 1943 and transported to Auschwitz in February 1944. He remained there until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. "If This Is a Man" recounts his experiences in the camp. Composition. Levi began to write in February 1946, with a draft of what would become the final chapter recording his most  recent memories of Auschwitz. According to Ian Thomson, Levi worked over the next ten months with concentrated energy and extreme facility. Levi told him that the words poured out of him "like a flood which has been dammed and suddenly rushes forth". In the daytime Levi was working at a paint factory north-east of Turin. Mostly he wrote in the evenings and late into the night, although Levi said that the chapter "The Canto of Ulysses" was written almost entirely in a single, half-hour lunch break. The first manuscript was completed in December 1946 and required considerable editorial  work. His future wife, Lucia Morpurgo, helped him to shape the book, giving it a clear sense of direction. Publication. In January 1947, the manuscript was initially rejected by Einaudi, with the writers Cesare Pavese and Natalia Ginzburg thinking it too early after the war for such an account. However Levi managed to find a smaller publisher, De Silva, who printed 2,500 copies of the book, 1,500 of which were sold, mostly in Levi's hometown of Turin. In 1955, Levi signed a contract with Einaudi for a new edition, which was published in 1958. The initial printing of 2000  copies was followed by a second of the same size. An English translation by Stuart Woolf was published in 1959. A German translation by Heinz Reidt appeared in 1961 (titled "Ist das ein Mensch?") and a French edition in the same year. All translations were completed under Levi's close supervision. He was particularly careful to oversee the German translation, writing in "The Drowned and the Saved": "I did not trust my German publisher. I wrote him an almost insolent letter: I warned him not to remove or change a single word in the text, and I insisted that he  send me the manuscript of the translation in batches ... I wanted to check on not merely its lexical but also its inner faithfulness." Robert S. C. Gordon writes that Levi went on to develop a close relationship with Reidt. The German edition contains a special preface addressed to the German people, which Levi said he wrote out of passionate necessity to remind them what they had done. "If This Is a Man" is often published alongside Levi's second work of witness, "The Truce" (Italian title: "La Tregua"). The English translation of that book was published in 1965, again by  Stuart Woolf, and was awarded the John Florio Prize for Italian translation in 1966. Invocation. The book is introduced by a poem. The construction "If ..." invites the reader to make a judgment. It alludes to the treatment of people as "Untermenschen" (German for "sub-humans"), and to Levi's examination of the degree to which it was possible for a prisoner in Auschwitz to retain his or her humanity. The poem explains the title and sets the theme of the book: humanity in the midst of inhumanity. The last part of the poem, beginning "meditate", explains Levi's purpose in  having written it: to record what happened so that later generations will "ponder" (a more literal translation of "meditare") the significance of the events he lived through. It also parallels the language of the "V'ahavta", the Jewish prayer that commands followers to remember and pass on the teachings of their faith. Style. The calm sobriety of Levi's prose style is all the more striking given the horrific nature of the events he describes. Levi explained in his 1976 Appendix to the work: "I thought that my word would be more credible and useful the more objective it appeared and  the less impassioned it sounded; only in that way does the witness in court fulfil his function, which is to prepare the ground for the judge. It is you who are the judges." He ascribed the clarity of his language to the habits acquired during his training as a chemist: "My model was that of the weekly reports, a normal practice in factories: they must be concise, precise and written in a language accessible to all levels of the firm's hierarchy." Adaptation for radio. In 1965 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired the 140-minute dramatic feature, "If This is  a Man", George Whalley's adaptation of Stuart Woolf's translation. The broadcast was produced by John Reeves, who has written about the radio production.