Television presenter Nick Hewer chooses.
Primo Levi was an Italian-Jewish chemist, author and Holocaust survivor. His best-known works are If This Is a Man (1947), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War, and The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of short stories named after chemical elements. He died after falling from the third floor of the block of flats where he lived in Turin. The coroner ruled that it was suicide.
When did you first hear about Primo Levi?
I had a Jewish uncle – a wonderful man from Frankfurt, free of hatred – who my Irish aunt married after he was sent to his family’s London office before the war. The poor man lost his family during the conflict – they were murdered by the Germans in Auschwitz, and I think it was that which initially fuelled my interest in the Holocaust and inspired me to read Primo Levi’s shocking memoir of his time there, when I was in my twenties.
What kind of person was he?
This story is from the September 2017 edition of BBC History Magazine.
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This story is from the September 2017 edition of BBC History Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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