Primo Levi Chapter Summary

In December 1943 in northern Italy, a small anti-Nazi resistance group with only 9 members, including a Jewish Italian named Primo Levi, was infiltrated by the Fascist Militia and its members were sent to a detention camp in Fossoli, Italy. Just two months after their capture, on February 21, 1944, all Jews at Fossoli were shipped to Auschwitz where most of them would meet their death. Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi’s memoir of the ten months he spent in a Nazi concentration camp, then begins. From this point, Levi never goes farther than 400 yards outside the camp as he describes his experiences at the Larger (the German word for camp).

As a new prisoner to Auschwitz, Primo Levi had to learn the routine, layout, and rules of camp life. He describes arriving at the Lager as hitting the bottom and being stripped completely of his manhood and everything he had known before. He was now Häftling (German for prisoner) number 174517, and the only way out, Levi quickly learned, was “by way of the chimney” (29). During the middle chapters of the book, Primo tells stories of occurrences and reflections, not necessarily chronologically, on certain aspects of the camp. These include the tale of his time in the Krankenbau, or infirmary, in addition to the day to day events

This tone accounts for the harsh reality of life as a prisoner at Auschwitz, which stripped its prisoners of anything that might remind them of their previous life or their human sensitivities. Levi also portrays the severe physical suffering endured by prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp. He tells of the freezing cold, for which they were left ill equipped to endure, the paralyzing hunger that never left, and the brutal labor they were forced to complete. The author gives endless details throughout the book of the intricate pains which they were forced to