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The Drowned and the Saved
Levi wrote of the moral collapse that occurred in Auschwitz and the fallibility of human memory that allows such atrocities to recur. Levi's last book published before his death in 1987.
Paperback, 203 pages
Published
April 23rd 1989
by Vintage
(first published 1986)
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THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED. (1988). Primo Levi. ****.
This was Primo Levi’s last book. In it, he tried to sum up his conclusions about the holocaust that he attempted to expound in his many earlier books. He admits, “An apology is in order. This very book is drenched in memory; what’s more, a distant memory. Thus it draws from a suspect source and must be protected against itself. So here then: it contains more considerations than memories, lingers more wilingly on the state of aff...more
This was Primo Levi’s last book. In it, he tried to sum up his conclusions about the holocaust that he attempted to expound in his many earlier books. He admits, “An apology is in order. This very book is drenched in memory; what’s more, a distant memory. Thus it draws from a suspect source and must be protected against itself. So here then: it contains more considerations than memories, lingers more wilingly on the state of aff...more
For those who don't know, Primo Levi was a Jewish chemist from Modena, deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and liberated 11 months later. He died in the 1980's.
A lot of the book is about exploring the psychology of the trauma, both personal to him but also to nations and groups. Particularly interesting was to read how people (including me) have so many misconceptions. For example, he says that the biggest shock was that on arrival it was the other inmates who were aggressive to newcomers....more
A lot of the book is about exploring the psychology of the trauma, both personal to him but also to nations and groups. Particularly interesting was to read how people (including me) have so many misconceptions. For example, he says that the biggest shock was that on arrival it was the other inmates who were aggressive to newcomers....more
Very interesting subjective analysis of what the Holocaust meant to someone who lived through it & survived internment in Auschwitz. I would give it five stars but for the fact that the book is not self-contained and refers to earlier writings, e.g., Survival in Auschwitz, in a manner suggesting that Levi presumes I've read that book, which I have not. The prose, translated from Italian to English, is captivating and I read for hours on end to complete the book in just two sittings. Other rev...more
Primo Levi wrote this book 40 years after the Holocaust, in effort to explain the meaning of the event so that it and its victims would not be forgotten. He is careful to discuss only that which he experienced first hand, so his writing is immediate and powerful. He doesn't accept any excuses from the German people and warns that it can happen again, anyplace, any time.
This book seems to serve as a philosphical postscript to Sr Levi's previous writings in that it refers, and adds, to subjects and themes already covered in other books. It includes some very profound insight which shows the mind of an intelligent man still struggling, even at a distance of some 30 years, to come to terms with the events of World War II, Germany and the people involved; particularly 'the Germans' the elusive, passive enemy.
The most remarkable statement of this book is tha...more
The most remarkable statement of this book is tha...more
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This book is divided for eight esseys:
a) Memory of indignity
b) Grey area
c) Shame - shame that you survived instead of a person, who you think was more intelligent, educated, produuctive.
d) Communicating - prisoners of Auschitz had problems with communicating with each other and the guards, because they came from different countries and speaking different tongues. Jews from Italy, Belgium, France didn't speak German or Yiddish.
e) Unneccesary violance - transporting...more
a) Memory of indignity
b) Grey area
c) Shame - shame that you survived instead of a person, who you think was more intelligent, educated, produuctive.
d) Communicating - prisoners of Auschitz had problems with communicating with each other and the guards, because they came from different countries and speaking different tongues. Jews from Italy, Belgium, France didn't speak German or Yiddish.
e) Unneccesary violance - transporting...more
This book was a selection of a book club that I'm in. I have read a slew of books about the Holocaust and wasn't sure that I was ready for another one. I was wrong.
What I liked about this book is that it is a reflection, and memories to put the reflections into context, about a horrific chapter in human history. Primo writes about the "gray zone" of inmate hierarchy including the Kapos and how the Nazi system of dehumanization led to situations where inmates hurt each other...more
What I liked about this book is that it is a reflection, and memories to put the reflections into context, about a horrific chapter in human history. Primo writes about the "gray zone" of inmate hierarchy including the Kapos and how the Nazi system of dehumanization led to situations where inmates hurt each other...more
No seguimento de 'Se Isto é um Homem' e 'A Trégua', neste livro Primo Levi fala da extrema complexidade que caracterizou as relações de poder e de convivência nos campos de concentração e de extremínio nazis. Este sobrevivente de Auschwitz questiona-se sobre o modo como o povo alemão se deixou seduzir e iludir por um regime totalitário, e preocupa-se com a dificuldade de transmissão da memória às gerações mais novas que sempre viveram em liberdade. Publicado um ano antes de Primo Levi se ter sui...more
This is not a novel but more of an essay The Drowned and the Saved is an attempt at an analytical approach. The problem of the fallibility of memory, the techniques used by the Nazis to break the will of prisoners, the use of language in the camps and the nature of violence are all studied. It is written by Pimo Levi, an Italian Jew who was in Auschwitz. It is well written. My Levi is an agnostic. He makes reference and quotes many works of literature such as Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain and Maz...more
The final masterpiece from Levi is dedicated to examining his remembrances of the Holocaust and the aftermath. His depictions of his fellow survivors and the blind sadism of their captors are rendered in the most vivid light which makes it difficult to read. The most unsettling chapter is the "gray zone," revealing the culpability of those who corroborated with the Nazi regime, including other Jews.
Levi's unwavering account lays all bare as a warning to mankind that it can ...more
Levi's unwavering account lays all bare as a warning to mankind that it can ...more
I always wanted to read Primo Levi, especially "The Periodic Table". I picked it up a couple of weeks ago for 2 Euros at the British Bookstore in Vienna. While reading this book every night before falling asleep, I was often reminded of one of George Steiner's collection of essays, "Language and Silence." But Levi's book is far more confrontational and without compromise. The chapter entitled "Communicating" was especially compelling. Levi writes, of those in the ca...more
I sommersi e i salvati, che era fra l'altro il titolo che Levi aveva pensato per Se questo è un uomo, è un libro speculare al primo pubblicato da Levi, e in un certo senso lo completa: se il primo è segnato da un'urgente e giusta esigenza di raccontare, questo è ragionato, e non si basa tanto sul racconto dell'esperienza diretta dell'autore, quanto sulle riflessioni su Auschwitz, permesse anche dai molti decenni trascorsi intanto.
Wow. This novel is different from any other that I've read on the Holocaust, and I've read quite a few. Levi told his story through narrative in "Survival in Auschwitz" but in "The Drowned and the Saved," he's taking a look back at that and his other works, and his experience in general. This book is worth reading for everyone because of Levi's articulate and well-thought out points about the Holocaust, but especially insightful for someone who's been interested in the sub...more
I found this work thought provoking. It questions how as ordinary citizens we can be deceived or maybe choose to ignore or accept the horrors around us. Whilst it focuses on the horrors of the holocaust it identifies how even today we continue to ignore the atrocities we hear of, maybe because it is too painful to deal with the reality and continue to live our day to day lives.
I should reread a lot of the Primo Levi books, I have such a terrible memory. But this is one of the ones where he struggles with the memories of how random and unfair it was that he survived, and deals with the guilt for anything he did to survive that may have come at the expense of another prisoner.
This book stands on its own, aside from Primo's first two books. The statements he makes here about man's conditioning and reaction to the dehumanizing methods applied to the Lagers really make for some pivoting reading. I could read a quote or two, but it's hard to pick a sentence - you need to pick a paragraph, but then that doesn't quite cover what he is stating, so pick a chapter.. but.. you get my point.
I feel Levi described in great detail the way man is and was during the Holocaust and even after. The world in which he lived and survived is nothing anyone has ever experienced and he described it in such vivid detail.
This book was my first introduction to Primo Levi's work and his very last written shortly before his death. A collection of thoughts and observations on the Holocaust and mankind's culpability in such genocidal attrocities, it is profound and unique in its ability to explain the seemingly unexplainable...why. Although his answers are by no means complete, Levi's words are penetrating and move to the heart of what made the Holocaust a reality.
As a book it is written with great beaut...more
As a book it is written with great beaut...more
I read this for a college class. It was insightful into the nature of human forgiveness. I need to re-read this.
A worthwhile, if somewhat difficult (in an emotional sense), read. One of the best explorations as to 'why' the individuals at the centre of the Holocaust - perpetrators and victims - was allowed to happen.
In some respects, the apex of Levi's career as a public intellectual.
In some respects, the apex of Levi's career as a public intellectual.
Primo Levi's last book. Maybe an addendum to "Survival in Auschwitz". Read that first, than this one.
If there's a braver book, I've not read it or heard about it. 5 stars + all the rest.
Albie
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The Drowned and the Saved (Vintage International) by Primo Levi (1989)
This book puts lie the simplistic view of the Holocaust we grew up with in films like "Life is Beautiful."
Thought provoking book about how Levi survived Auschwitz and what he felt following liberation, even years later.
Jess
rated it
Recommends it for:
he who thinks, examines human nature, or reconfigures the word 'victim'
Recommended to Jess by:
Mark Larrimore
This book is rattling, gripping. Primo Levi was a brilliant mind & isn't afraid to highlight the complexities of banal human nature. A look inside the Nazi concentration camps, Levi writes as a survivor who denies being a victim. The only pure were the ones who died because the ones who survived must have done something terrible to keep living. Real in the most chilling way: we can never escape the evil that waits in our breasts. Levi was known for being an optimistic philosopher, but this ...more
This was the final book published by Levi before his death in 1987. It contains a kind of summation of his views on Hitlerian Germany, his experiences in the Auschwitz Arbeitslager and afterwards, and a continuation of some of the ideas he had introduced in earlier works (the title comes from a distinction he had made between two types of prisoners in a chapter of Survival in Auschwitz). This is a heartwrenching collection of essays written in Levi's typical tone, objective, piercing, and full...more
Wonderful - tied me up in knots thinking and thinking
a very powerful book.
sorry to see such a person who gave so much,lose themselves.the world is such a darker place with primo not here.
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Primo Michele Levi was a Jewish Italian chemist, Holocaust survivor and author of memoirs, short stories, poems, and novels.
He is best known for his work on the Holocaust, and in particular his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. If This Is a Man (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz) has been desc...more
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He is best known for his work on the Holocaust, and in particular his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. If This Is a Man (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz) has been desc...more
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“Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why.
The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero”
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More quotes…
The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero”
