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Primo Levi Biography
Transcript
1940 to liberation
Liberation
Pre-Auschwitz II
- 1941 – job in asbestos mine, extracting nickel (fake identity)
- March 1942 – his father died of bowel cancer
- Levi left the mine to work in Milan for a Swiss company extracting anti-diabetics from vegetable matter
- 21st of February, 1944
- 174,517
- Used bread to pay for German lessons
- Received soup ration from Lorenzo Perrone
- November, 1944 - Secured job as an assistant in IG Farben’s Buna Werke lab
Pre-Auschwitz I
- Levi continued his university studies with difficulty
- Summer of 1941 – graduated with full marks and merit
- Difficulty in finding employment
FOSSOLI CONCENTRATION CAMP
"and at the end of January 1944, we were taken to Fossoli on a passenger train. Our conditions in the camp were quite good. There was no talk of executions and the atmosphere was quite calm. We were allowed to keep the money we had brought with us and to receive money from the outside. We worked in the kitchen in turn and performed other services in the camp. We even prepared a dining room, a rather sparse one, I must admit.“ Primo Levi
Historical Background
- Before 1938 – no completely anti-Semitic
- July 1938 – “Manifesto of the Race”
- September 1938 – racial laws introduced
- June 1940 – Italy declared war on Britain and France air raids
Literary influences
- Levi returned home in October 1945, 10 months after Auschwitz was liberated.
- He was unrecognisable to his family
- Though none of his immediate family had died, many of his friends had not survived.
- Jule Verne and Jack London influence scientific work
- Classics, Dante, Mann, Flaubert, Hugo, Conrad, Kafka and others
- American writers
- Contemporary Italian literature
- Mann not passing universal judgements on Germans
21 January 1946
22 December 1946
11 October 1947
1961 - 1987
He retired in 1977 to become a full-time writer.
Until 1940
Youth
- youngest, shortest and cleverest boy in his class bullied
- Joined fascist movement “Avantguardisti” temporarily
- Sixth Form specialising in Classics at age 14
- Enrolled at university in October 1937
- Started Chemistry full-time course in February 1938
- Met Sandro DelMastro (anti-fascist)
Childhood
- He died on 11th April 1987
- He fell from the interior landing of his third-storey apartment in Turin to the ground floor below.
- Elie Wiesel: "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years earlier".
- There is contention as to whether it was accident or suicide.
- Born 31 July 1919 in Turin
- Liberal Jewish family
- Intellectual parents
- Little sister (born 1921) – very close
- Shy and introverted kid
- Did extremely well in his studies
Primo Levi
Post-Auschwitz
Biography
The End
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