Survival in Auschwitz (1958)
Originally published as If This Is a Man in 1947. This book describes Levi's time in Auschwitz, accounting everything from his arrival to his liberation by the Red Army. He wrote this book "struggling to explain to others, and myself, the events I have been involved in". The central themes of this book were humanity and survival; as he couldn't believe a human would stoop so low as to brutally end the lives of millions of innocent people, but he also couldn't believe he escaped such torture.
The Reawakening (1965)
Originally published as The Truce in 1963, it was the sequel to Survival in Auschwitz (or If This Is a Man). The book recounts Levi's feelings during his nine-month journey home after being liberated. On his train through Ukraine, Romania, Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Russia, his feelings of survivor's guilt intensified, especially upon seeing all the destruction and murder that had occurred in these cities. In 1997, the book was adapted into a movie, called "The Truce" (view the trailer below).
The Drowned and the Saved (1986)
This book combines all his previous works on the Holocaust. It discusses why things happened the way it did, especially how a people with such a rich culture as the Germans stooped so low as to commit mass genocide. He uses various survivors' stories to help in understanding the Nazis' "final solution", and discusses how people don’t believe the Holocaust happened because of the lack of physical evidence, which leads to people ignoring the tales of Holocaust survivors. This only solidifies his argument that the Holocaust was not only real but something that we, the new generation, have to know and learn about to prevent past events from reoccurring. Interestingly, the movie "The Grey Zone" (2001) was based on the last chapter of this book (view the trailer below).
Created by Asmita Ghosh