- Person
- Primo Levi
- Lived
- 1919–1987
- Field
- Literature
- From
- Italian
The story
Primo Levi wrote If This Is a Man to bear witness, and one of his main reasons for writing was to make the German people realise what had been done in their name and accept at least part of the responsibility. A German edition therefore mattered to him more than any other. Among all the translations of his book, he considered it perhaps the most significant.
The translation was made by Heinz Riedt beginning in 1959, under Levi's close supervision, and it was published in 1961 under the title Ist das ein Mensch? Levi later admitted that he did not trust his German publisher. He wrote an almost insolent letter warning that not a single word of the text should be removed or changed, and he insisted that the translation be sent to him in batches so that he could check not only its vocabulary but its inner faithfulness. He went on to develop a close working relationship with Riedt.
The German edition carried a special preface addressed to German readers, which Levi said he wrote out of a passionate need to remind them of what had happened. His wish to reach Germans also showed in his working life. As technical director of a Turin paint factory he travelled to Germany on business, and he made sure that the German businessmen and scientists he met could see the camp number tattooed on his arm.
German readers wrote back, and Levi later devoted a chapter of The Drowned and the Saved to their letters. One correspondent, Hety Schmitt-Maas, had been expelled from school because of her family's opposition to the Nazis. For seventeen years, until her death in 1983, she and Levi exchanged letters about their shared hatred of Nazism, and the friendship softened his view of Germans.
Levi said he did not hate the German people as a whole, because hating an entire nation would be too much like Nazism, but he never forgave the culprits. His works continued to appear in German, including If Not Now, When? in 1986, and his insistence on an accurate translation helped ensure that his testimony entered German life on his own terms.
Why it matters
By insisting on a faithful German edition, Levi carried Holocaust testimony into Germany itself and supported the country's long reckoning with its past.
About Primo Levi
Turin chemist and Auschwitz survivor whose If This Is a Man, The Periodic Table and The Drowned and the Saved are among the most important writings on the Holocaust.
More about Primo Levi
- Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved named the 'grey zone'In The Drowned and the Saved (1986), Primo Levi reflected on Auschwitz forty years later and introduced the idea of the 'grey zone', now central to Holocaust ethics.
- Primo Levi wrote one of the defining Auschwitz testimoniesMonths after returning from Auschwitz, chemist Primo Levi wrote If This Is a Man. First printed by a small press in 1947, it became one of the most widely read accounts of the camps.
Sources
- Primo Levi Wikipedia
- If This Is a Man Wikipedia
- Biography Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi
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