THE FOLIO SOCIETY

On arriving at Auschwitz in February 1944, more than 500 of his fellow deportees were sent straight to the gas chambers, but Primo Levi was one of the 'lucky' ones. He lived, to witness and suffer unimaginable horrors, and to write his emotional, yet extraordinarily measured memoir. If This is a Man is a descent into the very cradle of evil. The Nazi regime tolerated no aspect of individuality - possessions, hair, names, even dreams - but there were ways to survive and Levi learned them. The enduring message of his book is that 'precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts'.