Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man, also published in English as Survival in Auschwitz) was published by the small Turin publisher De Silva in 1947, in an edition of 2,500 copies that sold poorly. Levi — a twenty-four-year-old Italian-Jewish chemist when he was deported to Auschwitz in February 1944 — wrote the book immediately after his return, driven by what he called “an absolute, pathological need” to testify.
The book covers Levi’s eleven months in Auschwitz III (Monowitz), the labor camp attached to the Buna synthetic rubber factory. Levi survived through a combination of luck (he was assigned to a chemistry laboratory in the camp’s final months), physical resilience, and the assistance of Lorenzo, an Italian civilian worker who brought him extra food. He was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945, weighing barely forty kilograms.
Levi’s method is what makes the book unique among Holocaust testimonies: he writes as a scientist. He observes the camp as a system — analyzing its social structures, its economic mechanisms, its methods of dehumanization — with the same precision he would bring to a chemical experiment. There is no rhetorical rage, no literary embellishment, no melodrama. The horror communicates itself through the clarity of observation: Levi describes what happened, exactly, and trusts the reader to understand what it means.
The chapter “The Drowned and the Saved” (later expanded into a full book) contains Levi’s central moral insight: that the camp’s victims cannot be divided into simple categories of heroes and collaborators, that the “gray zone” between them is where most human behavior actually occurs, and that judgment from outside is both necessary and always slightly false.
Collecting If This Is a Man
First edition (De Silva, Turin, 1947): Paper wrappers, small format. Print run of 2,500.
First significant edition (Einaudi, Turin, 1958): Cloth, revised text.
First English edition (Orion Press, New York, 1959): As Survival in Auschwitz.
Market values:
- De Silva first edition (1947): $5,000–$15,000 (extremely scarce)
- Einaudi 1958 edition: $300–$800
- English first (Orion, 1959): $200–$600
- Stuart Woolf translation (1960s): $50–$150
Projected values (2026–2036): Very strong appreciation. One of the most important books of the twentieth century.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Primo Levi? Primo Levi (1919–1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer who survived Auschwitz and became one of the most important witnesses to the Holocaust. His books — combining memoir, science, fiction, and philosophy — are distinguished by their clarity, moral precision, and refusal of rhetoric. He died in 1987 in what was officially ruled a suicide, though some scholars dispute this conclusion.