Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist, wartime partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer, born in 1919, who died in 1987. He is best known for If This Is a Man, published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz, his 1947 account of the year he spent imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and for The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of largely autobiographical short stories each named for a chemical element, which the Royal Institution of Great Britain named the best science book ever written. Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall, a death officially ruled a suicide though the finding has been disputed by some of his friends and associates.
Facts
AwardGrawemeyer Award for Music Composition, 1997. 1 AwardPremio Campiello, 1982. 1 Classification
Original Language FAQs
How did Primo Levi's training as a chemist help him survive Auschwitz?
His chemistry training earned him a job in a rubber factory at Auschwitz that spared him some of the camp's harshest conditions.
Levi arrived at Auschwitz in February 1944. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, he did whatever he could to endure: he traded his food for German lessons and used his training as a chemist to earn a job in a rubber factory, which let him avoid some of the harshest realities of the camp. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, and Levi was among the fewer than 700 of the more than 7,000 Italian Jews deported to concentration camps who survived.
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Source Wikipedia: Primo Levi
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Primo Levi
Infobox, birth date
31 July 1919
Infobox, birth year
31 July 1919
Infobox, death date
11 April 1987
Infobox, death year
11 April 1987
Lead paragraph
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
Award: Strega Prize
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
Award: Viareggio Prize
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
Award: Bagutta Prize
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
Award: Feltrinelli Prize
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
Award: Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
Award: Premio Campiello
Primo Michele Levi (Italian: [ˈpriːmo ˈlɛːvi]; 31 July 1919-11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel.
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