Primo Levi's Journey (La Strada di Levi)

Primo Levi's tale of surviving the horrors of Auschwitz was memorialized in a book that, for many, is the key text of the Holocaust. In recounting his story in "If This Is a Man" (translated in the United States as "Survival in Auschwitz"), Levi became a spokesperson for an entire generation of Jews. After Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945, it took Levi nearly a year to make it back to his home in Turin. As the war was still underway, Levi and six hundred other survivors were put on a train and sent eastwards from the front. The long trip that ensued was a strange mixture of wonder, regeneration, confusion and boredom. At the same time, each person was coming to grips with the fact that they had survived. Here, Primo Levi's journey is retraced step by step.