66 Facts About Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor.

Primo Levi was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.

Primo Levi's best-known works include If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table, linked to qualities of the elements, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written.

Primo Levi was born in 1919 in Turin, Italy, at Corso Re Umberto 75, into a liberal Jewish family.

Primo Levi too was an avid reader, played the piano, and spoke fluent French.

In 1921 Anna Maria, Primo Levi's sister, was born; he remained close to her all her life.

Primo Levi's father remained in the city, partly because of his dislike of the rural life, but because of his infidelities.

In September 1930 Primo Levi entered the Royal Gymnasium a year ahead of normal entrance requirements.

Primo Levi avoided rifle drill by joining the ski division, and spent every Saturday during the season on the slopes above Turin.

Primo Levi continued to be bullied during his time at the Lyceum, although six other Jews were in his class.

Primo Levi's father was able to keep him out of the Navy by enrolling him in the Fascist militia.

Primo Levi remained a member through his first year of university, until passage of the Italian Racial Laws of 1938 forced his expulsion.

Primo Levi later recounted this series of events in the short story "Fra Diavolo on the Po".

Primo Levi had matriculated a year earlier than scheduled enabling him to take a degree.

The racial laws prevented Primo Levi from finding a suitable permanent job after graduation.

In December 1941 Primo Levi received an informal job offer from an Italian officer to work as a chemist, under a clandestine identity, at an asbestos mine in San Vittore.

Primo Levi later understood that, if successful, he would be aiding the German war effort, which was suffering nickel shortages in the production of armaments.

Primo Levi returned to Turin to find his mother and sister in refuge in their holiday home 'La Saccarello' in the hills outside the city.

When told he would be shot as an Italian partisan, Primo Levi confessed to being Jewish.

Primo Levi was sent to the internment camp at Fossoli near Modena.

Primo Levi recalled that as long as Fossoli was under the control of the Italian Social Republic, rather than Nazi Germany, he was not harmed.

We were given, on a regular basis, a food ration destined for the soldiers", Primo Levi's testimony stated, "and at the end of January 1944, we were taken to Fossoli on a passenger train.

Primo Levi spent eleven months there before the camp was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945.

Primo Levi knew some German from reading German publications on chemistry; he worked to orient quickly to life in the camp without attracting the attention of the privileged inmates.

Primo Levi used bread to pay a more experienced Italian prisoner for German lessons and orientation in Auschwitz.

Primo Levi was given a smuggled soup ration each day by Lorenzo Perrone, an Italian civilian bricklayer working there as a forced labourer.

Primo Levi started to write the first draft of If This Is a Man.

Lucia, who now reciprocated Primo Levi's love, helped him to edit it, to make the narrative flow more naturally.

In January 1947, Primo Levi was taking the finished manuscript around to publishers.

In September 1947, Primo Levi married Lucia and a month later, on 11 October, If This Is a Man was published with a print run of 2,000 copies.

Primo Levi agreed to work for Accatti in the family paint business which traded under the name SIVA.

Lorenzo had been a civilian forced worker in Auschwitz, who for six months had given part of his ration and a piece of bread to Primo Levi without asking for anything in return.

Primo Levi made several trips to rescue his old friend from the streets, but in 1952 Lorenzo died.

In gratitude for his kindness in Auschwitz, Primo Levi named both of his children, Lisa Lorenza and Renzo, after him.

In 1950, having demonstrated his chemical talents to Accatti, Primo Levi was promoted to Technical Director at SIVA.

Primo Levi made several trips to Germany and carefully engineered his contacts with senior German businessmen and scientists.

Primo Levi became involved in organisations pledged to remembering and recording the horror of the camps.

Primo Levi dutifully attended many such anniversary events over the years and recounted his own experiences.

In 1958 Stuart Woolf, in close collaboration with Primo Levi, translated If This Is a Man into English, and it was published in the UK in 1959 by Orion Press.

Also in 1959 Heinz Riedt, under close supervision by Primo Levi, translated it into German.

Primo Levi began writing The Truce early in 1961; it was published in 1963, almost 16 years after his first book.

Primo Levi regularly contributed articles to, the Turin newspaper.

Primo Levi worked to gain a reputation as a writer about subjects other than surviving Auschwitz.

In 1964 Primo Levi collaborated on a radio play based upon If This Is a Man with the state broadcaster RAI, and in 1966 with a theatre production.

Primo Levi published two volumes of science fiction short stories under the pen name of Damiano Malabaila, which explored ethical and philosophical questions.

In 1974 Primo Levi arranged to go into semi-retirement from SIVA in order to have more time to write.

Primo Levi wanted to escape the burden of responsibility for managing the paint plant.

In 1975 a collection of Primo Levi's poetry was published under the title.

Primo Levi wrote two other highly praised memoirs, and.

In 1977 at the age of 58, Primo Levi retired as a part-time consultant at the SIVA paint factory to devote himself full-time to writing.

Primo Levi was impressed by their strength, resolve, organisation, and sense of purpose.

Primo Levi became a major literary figure in Italy, and his books were translated into many other languages.

In Israel, a country formed partly by Jewish survivors who lived through horrors similar to those Primo Levi described, many of his works were not translated and published until after his death.

Primo Levi used to write these stories and hoard them, releasing them to at the rate of about one a week.

At the time of his death in April 1987, Primo Levi was working on another selection of essays called The Double Bond, which took the form of letters to.

Carole Angier, in her biography of Primo Levi, describes how she tracked some of these essays down.

Primo Levi died on 11 April 1987 after a fall from the interior landing of his third-story apartment in Turin to the ground floor below.

Primo Levi said he found it impossible to look at his mother, who was ill with cancer, without recalling the faces of people stretched out on benches in Auschwitz.

The Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta noted that Primo Levi left no suicide note, nor any other indication that he was considering suicide.

Primo Levi wrote If This Is a Man to bear witness to the horrors of the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jewish people and others.

Primo Levi visited over 130 schools to talk about his experiences in Auschwitz.

Primo Levi vigorously repudiated historical revisionist attitudes in German historiography that emerged in the Historikerstreit led by the works of people like Andreas Hillgruber and Ernst Nolte, who drew parallels between Nazism and Stalinism.

Primo Levi rejected the idea that the labor camp system depicted in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and that of the Nazi were comparable.

Primo Levi's view was that the Nazi death camps and the attempted annihilation of the Jews was a horror unique in history because the goal was the complete destruction of a race by one that saw itself as superior.

Primo Levi noted that it was highly organized and mechanized; it entailed the degradation of Jews to the point of using their ashes as materials for paths.

Primo Levi wrote in clear, dispassionate style about his experiences in Auschwitz, with an embrace of whatever humanity he found, showing no lasting hatred of the Germans, although he made it clear that he did not forgive any of the culprits.