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Primo Levi is a twenty-four-year-old Italian of Jewish descent. He is just beginning his professional career as an organic chemist when Fascist political forces uproot him from his homeland and consign him to a Nazi slave labor camp. Levi navigates his sudden immersion in the multinational population of Auschwitz with the curiosity and intellectual rigor of the scientist he trained to be. When he resolves to survive, he studies both the men who thrive and those who die with shrewd insight. Within the boundaries of his own ethical principles, Levi appropriates the strategies and character strengths that help prisoners succeed in survival. Owing to his relatively slight stature, he recognizes with gratitude the gracious help he receives in many adverse circumstances. Levi returns the kindnesses of fellow prisoners in the last ten days of the labor camp when he makes it his mission to see that all the men in his ward survive until liberation. Levi’s Jewish heritage gives him a historical perspective on the dynamics of survival, as their national narrative of adversity is documented in the Judaic scriptures. Salvation comes to Levi through his analytical passion and appreciation of the diversity of humans, which carry him through his year of incarceration.
