Auschwitz Report

August 14, 2006
First published in Italy in 1946, this newly rediscovered early work by the celebrated late author of such Holocaust memoirs as Survival in Auschwitz
—an eyewitness account of conditions at Buna-Monowitz, a satellite camp of Auschwitz—appears in English for the first time. The short report was written for the Russian authorities who had liberated the camp and were gathering information on German war crimes. While the report is not exactly a curiosity—one of the first written by eyewitnesses, it has an important place in Holocaust historiography—it contains little new information. Some of what it does contain—for instance, the authors thought the Sonderkommandos
were criminal inmates rather than Jews—we now know to be inaccurate. Despite this, the publication of the document gives readers, and especially Holocaust scholars, new insights into Levi's work. An excellent introduction by editor Gordon gives an astute overview of the stylistic and historical relationship between this work and Levi's later autobiographical writings. Levi's training as a chemist and his friend and fellow survivor De Benedetti's training as a physician bring to the piece a dispassionate tone that has, in a sense, prefigured the best writing about the Holocaust. This is an important addition to Holocaust literature, but probably of limited interest to the general reader.

October 1, 2006
In 1944, Primo Levi was one of several hundred Italian Jews transported to Aushwitz. After the liberation of the concentration camp by the Soviet army, Levi and De Benedetti, a fellow survivor, were asked by their liberators to write a report about the camp. Levi was trained as a scientist; De Benedetti, a physician. Their report appeared slightly edited in an Italian medical journal in 1946 but has been mostly lost to history, not even mentioned in Ian Thomsons magisterial biography "Primo Levi: A Life". The authors relate with great economy the basic depredations of concentration camp life that are now so well known yet all the same stunning each time we read them. No, there is nothing new hereLevi later expanded on his observations many times over, while De Benedetti apparently never wrote again but returned happily to practicing medicine. But the reports sting and historical significancethere is an introduction by Robert S.C. Gordon (Italian, Caius Coll., Cambridge)mean that it belongs in most academic and public libraries."Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA"

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