Early life Levi was born in 1919 in
Turin, at Corso Re Umberto 75, into a
liberal Jewish family. They were
Piedmontese Jews whose ancestors came from Spain following the
1492 expulsion. His father, Cesare Levi (1878–1942), worked for the manufacturing firm
Ganz and spent much of his time working abroad in Hungary, where Ganz was based. Cesare was an avid reader and
autodidact. Levi's mother, Esterina (Ester Luzzati Levi, 1895–1991), known to everyone as Rina, was well educated, having attended the . She too was an avid reader, played the piano, and spoke fluent French. The marriage between Rina and Cesare had been arranged by Rina's father. The children spent summers with their mother in the Waldensian valleys south-west of Turin, where Rina rented a farmhouse. His father remained in the city, partly because of his dislike of the rural life, but also because of his infidelities. In September 1930, Levi entered the Royal Gymnasium a year ahead of normal entrance requirements. In class, he was the youngest, the shortest and the cleverest, as well as being the only Jew. Only two boys there bullied him for being Jewish, but their animosity was traumatic. In August 1932, following two years attendance at the
Talmud Torah school in Turin to pick up the elements of doctrine and culture, he sang in the local synagogue for his
Bar Mitzvah. As a young boy, Levi was plagued by illness, particularly chest infections, but he was keen to participate in physical activity. In his teens, Levi and a few friends would sneak into a disused sports stadium and conduct athletic competitions. Levi continued to be bullied during his time at the Lyceum, although six other Jews were in his class. Upon reading
Concerning the Nature of Things by English scientist
Sir William Bragg, Levi decided that he wanted to be a
chemist. In 1937, he was summoned before the War Ministry and accused of ignoring a draft notice from the
Italian Royal Navy. It was one day before he was to write a final examination on Italy's participation in the Spanish Civil War, based on a quote from
Thucydides: "We have the singular merit of being brave to the utmost degree." Distracted and terrified by the draft accusation, he failed the exam—the first poor grade of his life—and was devastated. His father was able to keep him out of the Navy by enrolling him in the Fascist militia (
Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale). He remained a member through his first year of university, until the passage of the
Italian Racial Laws of 1938 forced his expulsion. Levi later recounted that series of events in the short story
Fra Diavolo on the Po. He retook and passed his final examinations and, in October, enrolled at the
University of Turin to study chemistry. As one of 80 candidates, he spent three months taking lectures, and in February, after passing his
colloquio (oral examination), he was selected as one of 20 to move on to the full-time chemistry curriculum. During the liberal period in Italy, as well as in the first decade of the Fascist regime, Jews held many public positions, and were prominent in literature, science and politics. In 1929, Mussolini signed the
Lateran Treaty with the
Catholic Church, which established Catholicism as the State religion, allowed the Church to influence many sectors of education and public life, and relegated other religions to the status of "tolerated cults". In 1936, Italy's conquest of
Ethiopia, and the expansion of what the regime regarded as the Italian "colonial empire", brought the question of "race" to the forefront. In the context set by those events, and the
1939 alliance with Hitler's Germany, the situation of the Jews of Italy changed radically. In July 1938, a group of prominent Italian scientists and intellectuals published the "
Manifesto of Race", a mixture of racial and ideological
antisemitic theories from ancient and modern sources. The treatise formed the basis of the Italian Racial Laws of October 1938. After their enactment, Italian Jews lost their basic civil rights, positions in public offices, and their assets. Their books were prohibited, and Jewish writers could no longer publish in magazines owned by
Aryans. Jewish students who had begun their course of study were permitted to continue, but new Jewish students were barred from entering university. Levi had matriculated a year earlier than scheduled, enabling him to take a degree. A friend, Sandro Delmastro, taught him how to hike, and they spent many weekends in the mountains above Turin. Levi later wrote about that time in the chapter "Iron" in
The Periodic Table: “To see Sandro in the mountains reconciled you with the world and made you forget the nightmare weighing on Europe [...] He stirred in me a new communion with earth and sky, in which my need for freedom, the fullness of my powers, and the hunger to understand things that had driven me to chemistry converged.” In June 1940, as an ally of Germany, Italy declared war against Britain and France, and the first
Allied air raids on Turin began two days later. Levi's studies continued during the bombardments. The family suffered additional strain as his father became bedridden with
bowel cancer.
Chemistry Because of the new racial laws and the increasing intensity of Fascist action, Levi had difficulty finding an advisor for his Ph.D. dissertation, which was on the subject of the
Walden inversion, a study of the asymmetry of the
carbon atom. Eventually taken on by Dr. Nicolò Dallaporta, Levi graduated in mid-1941 with full marks and merit, having submitted additional theses on
x-rays and
electrostatic energy. His degree certificate bore the remark: "of Jewish race". The racial laws prevented Levi from finding a suitable permanent job after graduation. The job required Levi to work under a false name with false papers. Three months later, in March 1942, his father died. Levi left the mine in June to work in
Milan for the Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer
Wander AG, on a project to extract an anti-diabetic from vegetable matter. Recruited through a fellow student at Turin University, he took the job in a Swiss company to escape the Italian race laws. It soon became clear that the project had no chance of succeeding, but it was in no-one's interest to say so. In July 1943, King
Victor Emmanuel III deposed Mussolini and appointed a new government under Marshal
Pietro Badoglio, which prepared to sign the
Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies. When the armistice was made public on 8 September, the Germans occupied northern and central Italy,
liberated Mussolini from imprisonment, and appointed him as head of the
Italian Social Republic, a
puppet state in German-occupied northern Italy. Levi returned to Turin to find his mother and sister in refuge at their country estate "Il Saccarello", by Superga in the hills outside Turin. The three moved to
Saint-Vincent in the
Aosta Valley, where they could be hidden. Being pursued as Jews, many of whom had already been interned by the authorities, they moved up the hillside to Amay in the , a rebellious area highly suitable for
guerrilla activities.
Italian resistance movement The
Italian resistance movement became increasingly active in the German-occupied zone. Levi and some comrades took to the foothills of the Alps and, in October, formed a partisan group in the hope of being affiliated with the liberal
Giustizia e Libertà. Untrained for such a venture, he and his companions were arrested by the
Fascist militia on 13 December 1943. Believing he would be shot as an
Italian partisan, Levi confessed to being Jewish. He was sent to the
internment camp at Fossoli near
Modena. Levi later wrote the following about the conditions at Fossoli:
Auschwitz (near Auschwitz) 1941 ,
Monowitz and subcamps Fossoli was taken over by the Germans, who started arranging the deportations of the Jews to eastern concentration and death camps. On 21 February 1944, on the second of the transports, Levi and other inmates were transported in twelve cramped cattle trucks to
Monowitz, one of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Levi (record number 174517) spent eleven months there before
the camp was liberated by the
Red Army on 27 January 1945. Before the arrival of the Russians, inmates were sorted according to whether they could work or not. An acquaintance of Levi's said that neither classification would make any difference in the end. He declared he was unable to work and was killed immediately. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camps alive. The average life expectancy of a new entrant to the camp was three to four months. Levi knew some German from reading German publications on chemistry, and he worked to adjust quickly to life in the camp without attracting the attention of the privileged inmates. He used bread to pay a more experienced Italian prisoner to help him improve his German and understand how to cope in Auschwitz. He was given a smuggled soup ration each day by
Lorenzo Perrone, an Italian civilian bricklayer who was working at Auschwitz as a
forced labourer. Levi's professional qualifications were useful to the Germans and, in mid-November 1944, he secured a position as an assistant in
IG Farben's
Buna Werke laboratory that was aiming to produce
synthetic rubber. By avoiding
hard labour in freezing outdoor temperatures he was able to survive, as well as by stealing materials from the laboratory and trading them for extra food. Shortly before the camp was liberated by the
Red Army, he fell ill with
scarlet fever and was placed in the camp's sanatorium (camp hospital). On 18 January 1945, the
SS hurriedly evacuated the camp as the Red Army approached, forcing all but the gravely ill on a long
death march to a site further from the front. The march resulted in the deaths of the vast majority of the remaining prisoners, but Levi's illness spared him that fate. Although liberated on 27 January 1945, Levi did not reach Turin until 19 October 1945. After spending some time in a
Soviet camp for former concentration camp inmates, he embarked on an arduous journey home in the company of former Italian
prisoners of war who had been part of the
Italian Army in Russia. The long railway journey home to Turin took him on a circuitous route from Poland, through Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Austria, and Germanyan arduous journey described especially in his 1963 work
The Trucenoting the millions of displaced people on the roads and trains throughout Europe in that period.
Writing career 1946–1960 Levi was almost unrecognisable on his return to Turin.
Malnutrition edema had bloated his face. Sporting a scrawny beard and wearing an old
Red Army uniform, he returned to Corso Re Umberto. The next few months gave him an opportunity to recover physically, re-establish contact with surviving friends and family, and start looking for work. Levi suffered from the psychological trauma of his experiences. Having been unable to find work in Turin, he started to look for work in Milan. On his train journeys, he began to tell people he met stories about his time at Auschwitz. At a
Jewish New Year party in 1946, he met Lucia Morpurgo, who offered to teach him to dance, and Levi fell in love with her. At about that time, he started writing poetry about his experiences in Auschwitz. On 21 January 1946, he started work at DUCO, a
Du Pont Company paint factory outside Turin. Because of the extremely limited train service, Levi stayed in the factory dormitory during the week, which gave him the opportunity to write undisturbed, and he started the first draft of
If This Is a Man. Every day, as memories came to him, he scribbled notes on train tickets and scraps of paper. At the end of February, he had ten pages detailing the last ten days between the German evacuation and the arrival of the Red Army. For the next ten months, the book took shape in his dormitory as he typed up his recollections each night. On 22 December 1946, the manuscript was complete. Lucia, who now reciprocated Levi's love, helped him to edit it, to make the narrative flow more naturally. In January 1947, Levi was taking the finished manuscript around to publishers. It was rejected by
Einaudi on the advice of
Natalia Ginzburg and, in the United States, it was turned down by
Little, Brown and Company on the advice of rabbi
Joshua Liebman, an opinion which contributed to the neglect of his work in that country for four decades. The social wounds of the war years were still too fresh, and he had no literary experience to give him a reputation as an author. Eventually, Levi found a publisher, Franco Antonicelli, through a friend of his sister. Antonicelli was an amateur publisher, but as an active anti-Fascist, he supported the substance of the book. At the end of June 1947, Levi suddenly left DUCO and teamed up with an old friend Alberto Salmoni to run a chemical consultancy from the top floor of Salmoni's parents' house. Many of Levi's experiences of that time found their way into his later writing. He and Salmoni made most of their money from making and supplying
stannous chloride for mirror makers, delivering the unstable chemical by bicycle across the city. Attempts to make lipsticks from reptile excreta, and a coloured
enamel to coat teeth, were turned into short stories. Accidents in their laboratory filled the Salmoni house with unpleasant smells and corrosive gases. In September 1947, Levi married Lucia and, a month later, on 11 October,
If This Is a Man was published, with a print run of 2,000 copies. In April 1948, with Lucia pregnant with their first child, Levi decided that the life of an independent chemist was too precarious. He agreed to work for Accatti in the family paint business, which traded under the name SIVA. In October 1948, his daughter Lisa was born. During that period, his friend
Lorenzo Perrone's physical and psychological health declined. Lorenzo had been a civilian forced worker in Auschwitz, who for six months had given part of his ration and a piece of bread to Levi without asking for anything in return, and the gesture saved Levi's life. In his memoir, Levi contrasted Lorenzo with everyone else in the camp, prisoners and guards alike, as someone who managed to preserve his humanity. After the war, Lorenzo could not cope with the memories of what he had seen and descended into alcoholism. Levi made several trips to rescue his old friend from the streets but, in 1952, Lorenzo died. As SIVA's principal chemist and
troubleshooter, Levi travelled abroad. He made several trips to Germany and carefully engineered his contacts with senior German businessmen and scientists. Wearing short-sleeved shirts, he made sure they saw the concentration camp number
tattooed on his arm. He became involved in organisations pledged to remembering and recording the horror of the camps. In 1954, he visited
Buchenwald to mark the ninth anniversary of the camp's liberation from the Nazis. Levi dutifully attended many such anniversary events over the years and recounted his own experiences. In July 1957, his son Renzo was born. Despite a positive review by
Italo Calvino in , only 1,500 copies of
If This Is a Man were sold. In 1958,
Einaudi, a major publisher, published it in a revised form and promoted it. In 1958
Stuart Woolf, in close collaboration with Levi, translated
If This Is a Man into English, and it was published in the UK by Orion Press in 1959. Also in 1959, Heinz Riedt, under close supervision by Levi, translated the book into German. Because one of Levi's primary reasons for writing the book was to get the German people to realise what had been done in their name, and to accept at least partial responsibility, that translation was perhaps the most significant to him.
1961–1974 Levi began writing
The Truce early in 1961. It was published in 1963, almost 16 years after his first book, and won the first annual
Premio Campiello literary award that year. It is often published in one volume with
If This Is a Man, because it covers his long return through eastern Europe from Auschwitz. Levi's reputation was growing, and he regularly contributed articles to , the Turin newspaper. He worked to gain a reputation as a writer about subjects other than surviving Auschwitz. In 1963, he suffered his first major bout of depression. At the time he had two young children, and a responsible job at a factory where accidents could and did have terrible consequences. He travelled and became a public figure. But the memory of what happened less than twenty years earlier still burned in his mind. Today, the link between such trauma and depression is better understood. Doctors prescribed several different drugs over the years, but they had variable efficacy and side effects. In 1964, Levi collaborated with the state broadcaster
RAI on a radio play based on
If This Is a Man and, in 1966, with a theatre production. Under the pen name of Damiano Malabaila, he published two volumes of science fiction short stories which explored ethical and philosophical questions. They imagined the effects on society of inventions which many would consider beneficial, but which, he saw, would have serious implications. Many of the stories from the two books (
Natural Histories, 1966) and (
Structural Defect, 1971) were later collected and published in English as
The Sixth Day and Other Tales. In 1974, Levi arranged to go into semi-retirement from SIVA in order to have more time to write. He also wanted to escape the burden of responsibility involved in managing the paint plant.
1975–1987 In 1975, a collection of Levi's poetry was published under the title (
The Bremen Beer Hall), which was published in English as
Shema: Collected Poems. He wrote two other highly praised memoirs, (
Moments of Reprieve, 1978) and (
The Periodic Table, 1975).
Moments of Reprieve deals with characters he observed during imprisonment.
The Periodic Table is a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories, and also includes two fictional stories that he wrote in 1941 while being employed at the asbestos mine in San Vittore. Each story is named after a chemical element and the subject matter of each story is related to that element. On 19 October 2006, the
Royal Institution in London declared that
The Periodic Table was the
best science book ever written. In 1984, Levi published his only
novel,
If Not Now, When?—or his second novel, if
The Monkey Wrench is counted. It traces the fortunes of a group of
Jewish partisans behind German lines during World War II as they seek to survive and continue their fight against the occupier. With the ultimate goal of reaching
Palestine to take part in the development of a
Jewish national home, the partisan band reaches Poland and then German territory. There, the surviving members are officially received as
displaced persons in territory held by the Western allies. Finally, they succeed in reaching Italy, on their way to Palestine. The novel won both the and the . The book was inspired by events during Levi's train journey home after liberation from the concentration camp, which was narrated in
The Truce. At one point in the journey, a band of Zionists hitched their wagon to the refugee train. Levi was impressed by their strength, resolve, organisation and sense of purpose. Levi became a major literary figure in Italy, and his books were translated into many other languages.
The Truce became a standard text in Italian schools. In 1985, he flew to the United States for a 20-day speaking tour. Although he was accompanied by Lucia, the trip was very draining for him. In the
Soviet Union, his early works were not accepted by censors because he had portrayed Soviet soldiers as slovenly and disorderly rather than heroic. In
Israel, a country formed partly by Jewish survivors who lived through horrors similar to those Levi described, many of his works were not translated and published until after his death. of
Rudolf Höss, who was commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to 1943. In it, he writes: "It's filled with evil ... and reading it is agony." Also in 1985, a volume of his essays, previously published in , was published under the title (''Other People's Trades''). Levi used to write the stories and hoard them, releasing them to at the rate of about one a week. The essays ranged from book reviews and ponderings about strange things in nature, to fictional short stories. He questioned what made a concert violinist behave as a callous taskmaster. Also in 1986, a collection of short stories, previously published in , was assembled and published as , some of which were published in the English volume
The Mirror Maker. At the time of his death in April 1987, Levi was working on another selection of essays called
The Double Bond, which took the form of letters to . The essays are very personal in nature, and approximately five or six chapters of the manuscript exist.
Carole Angier, in her biography of Levi, describes how she tracked some of these essays down. She wrote that others were being kept from public view by Levi's close friends, to whom he gave them, and they might have been destroyed.
Posthumous publications In March 2007, ''
Harper's Magazine'' published an English translation of Levi's story , about a fictitious weapon that is fatal at close range but harmless more than a meter away. It originally appeared in his 1971 book but was published in English for the first time by ''Harper's''.
A Tranquil Star, a collection of seventeen stories translated into English by
Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli was published in April 2007. In 2015, Penguin published
The Complete Works of Primo Levi, ed. Ann Goldstein. This is the first time that Levi's entire oeuvre has been translated into English.
Death Levi died on 11 April 1987 after a fall from the interior landing of his third-story apartment in Turin to the ground floor below. The coroner ruled his death a suicide. Three of his biographers (Angier, Thomson and Anissimov) agreed, but other writers (including at least one who knew him personally) questioned that determination. In his later life, Levi indicated that he was suffering from depression. Factors in that likely included responsibility for his elderly mother and mother-in-law, with whom he was living, and lingering traumatic memories. According to the chief rabbi of Rome
Elio Toaff, Levi telephoned him for the first time ten minutes before the incident. Levi said he found it impossible to look at his mother, who was ill with cancer, without recalling the faces of people stretched out on benches in Auschwitz. The Nobel laureate and fellow Holocaust survivor
Elie Wiesel said, at the time, "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later." The Nobel laureate
Rita Levi-Montalcini, a close friend of Levi, agreed. "As a chemical engineer," she said, "he might have chosen a better way [of exiting the world] than jumping into a narrow stairwell with the risk of remaining paralyzed." == Legacy ==