The Drowned and the Saved     by Primo Levi, Translated by R Rosenthal Original title: I sommersi e i salvati Original language: Italian Published by Vintage Books Pub. Date: April 1989 Format: Paperback, 203 pages Dimensions: 0.62 x 8.04 x 5.25 in. ISBN: 067972186X List Price: $12.00 Buy online from Amazon.com for $9.60 Published by Michael Joseph Pub. Date: 1988 Pub. Place: UK Format: Hardcover, 192 pages List Price: £13.99 Not available for ordering Published by Abacus Pub. Date: 1989 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 170 pages List Price: £5.99 Not available for ordering

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In this internationally celebrated book, Primo Levi, a Jewish-Italian concentration camp survivor, leaves a harrowing testament. Most importantly he accuses the German people of the collective crime of cowardice — cowardice in looking away from the system of human extermination set up in their name. He calls the whole existence of Nazi Germany ‘a war against memory’ and, for this reason perhaps, was moved to make the sacrifice of reliving his own memories of that period, an act that might have contributed to his sudden death shortly after the book’s completion. From the chapter The Grey Zone one realises that the ‘work’ of the camps was huge, consistent and well-organised, and went on for years; it could not have been merely the enterprise of a few SS zealots.


Levi highlights something infinitely depressing: the opportunism of German officers, functionaries and businessmen who simply didn’t want to pass up the opportunities for promotion and profit that the concentration camp system offered them; many of these people later hid behind the excuse of being forced to obey, although they might well have sidestepped orders. Moreover, writes Levi, the ghastly glimmer of the ‘drowned world’ illuminates a wider one, the mechanisms of irresponsible power being equivalent: the political criminals of today, for example, stand firmly in the footsteps of the Nazi pioneers of civilised barbarity. And Hitler in any case did permanently change the world: this is the hardest fact to face for all the European survivors of fascism and World War Two, Jews and Gentiles alike. Two generations have grown up in a racially ‘purified’ Europe and must face and act upon ‘the shame that the Germans never knew, the shame which the just man experiences when confronted by a crime committed by another.’


This is an important book not only because it documents the Shoah or holocaust but also because so many fundamental questions are raised by the reflections of a man who was a witness and struggled to survive and, yet more heroically, to understand these events.


Levi tried to remember fragments of Dante in the death camp because ‘they made it possible for me to re-establish a link with the past, saving it from oblivion and reinforcing my identity’. This search for cultural and psychological continuity in terrible conditions contrasts with the Europe that in 1945 sought to forget its recent past, immersing itself in dreams of building a socialist utopia in the East and a capitalist, consumer one in the West: two Brave New Worlds suffering from the same amnesia, a disregard for an inheritance in equal proportion magnificent and ugly, half-Mozart, half-Hitler. If today’s re-united continent is to retrace its steps, rediscover itself, accept and learn from its whole history, then the path leads through Belsen and Levi has written a guide.

‘So I realised that the German of the Lager — skeletal, howled, studded with obscenities and imprecations — was only vaguely related to the precise, austere language of my chemistry books, and to the melodious, refined German of Heine’s poetry that Clara, a classmate of mine, would recite to me.’ pp75-76

In this internationally celebrated book, Primo Levi, an Italian Jew and a concentration camp survivor, leaves a harrowing testament. Most importantly he here accuses the German people of the collective crime of cowardice — cowardice in looking away from the system of human extermination set up in their name. He calls the whole existence of Nazi Germany ’a war against memory’ and, for this reason perhaps, was moved to make the sacrifice of reliving his own memories of that period, an act that may have contributed to his sudden death shortly after the book’s completion. From the chapter The Grey Zone one realises that the ’work’ of the camps was huge, consistent and well-organised, and went on for years; it could not have been merely the enterprise of a few SS zealots.

Levi highlights something infinitely depressing: the — opportunism of German officers, functionaries and businessmen who simply didn’t want to pass up the opportunities for promotion and profit that the concentration camp system offered them; many of these people later hid behind the excuse of being forced to obey, although they might well have sidestepped orders. Moreover, writes Levi, the ghastly glimmer of the ’drowned world’ illuminates a wider one with similar mechanisms of irresponsible power. The (unpunished) political criminals of our times — the Chinese Government bullies in Tibet, the military torturers of Argentina, Chile or Guatemala, the mass-murderers of Rwanda or Bosnia — stand firmly in the footsteps of the Nazi pioneers of civilised barbarity.

Another part of the continuing significance of this book is that Hitler did permanently change the world: a hard fact to face for all the European survivors of fascism and World War Two, Jews and Gentiles alike. Two generations have grown up in a racially ’purified’ Europe and must face and act upon ’the shame that the Germans never knew, the shame which the just man experiences when confronted by a crime committed by another.’

This is an important book not only because it documents the Holocaust but because so many fundamental questions are raised by the reflections of a man who was a witness and struggled to survive and, yet more heroically, to understand these events.

Levi tried to remember fragments of Dante in the death camp because ’they made it possible for me to re-establish a link with the past, saving it from oblivion and reinforcing my identity’. This search for cultural and psychological continuity in terrible conditions contrasts with the Europe that in 1945 sought to forget its past, immersing itself in dreams of building a socialist utopia in the East and a capitalist, consumer one in the West: two Brave New Worlds suffering from the same amnesia, a disregard for an inheritance in equal proportion magnificent and ugly, half-Mozart, half-Hitler. If today’s re-united continent is to retrace its steps, rediscover itself, accept and learn from its whole history, then the path leads through Auschwitz and Levi has written a guide.

’So I realised that the German of the Lager — skeletal, howled, studded with obscenities and imprecations — was only vaguely related to the precise, austere language of my chemistry books, and to the melodious, refined German of Heine’s poetry that Clara, a classmate of mine, would recite to me.’ p75-6