This book was a challenging read, not due to its particular style or form, but because of its content. The Drowned and the Saved is, I guess, a character study of the people who were responsible for the atrocities of the Holocaust. Not the infamous figures like Hitler, Himmler, or Eichmann, but the average soldier who facilitated the day-to-day operations of the camps and, ultimately, "The Final Solution."
Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor, spent time at Auschwitz before the camp was liberated, making him one of the very few people to walk out of that camp alive.
While Levi has written several other books on the subject of concentration camps, this book takes a different angle. It inspects the event from a psychological and philosophical perspective. Each chapter explores a different way in which evil can exist, from the tool of communication (examining how knowing certain words, German slang, or commands can save your life) to "useless violence" (violence that has no end goal, means, or purpose). Each chapter reads like an essay to himself. Levi toys around with strong man and straw man scenarios that both prisoners and guards had or may have experienced. It's almost like he is experimenting with the idea of rationalizing the irrational.
It's a sobering read due to its content, but such an important one, which is why a book review felt vital to share. I'm a strong believer in the past being spoken about in the most frank and honest way as it both informs the future and warns of its dangers, and this book does that exceptionally. Levi concludes that something like this could happen again if all the chips fell into the right (or wrong, in this context) place.
Levi does not try to be sorrowful or self-absorbed. He tries to get to the crux of "why" it happened. What were the drivers? What were the tools the Nazi party used? He even explains a hierarchy in the camps, which on the surface may consist of guard>prisoner, but this was not the case. There were many subtle nuances to the types of prisoners, from an Italian-Jewish veterinarian to a German-Jewish shoemaker, both of whom had their own levels of hierarchy and could mean the difference between being offered a job in the camp and being sent to death. Levi talks about luck playing such a huge part in one's survival.
He makes it clear that the bravest of the victims were those dead (the drowned) and how his whole life he was revered for being a survivor, but his message is that the survivors (the saved) were the most scheming and least-principled, doing anything they could to survive.
Levi talks much about the guilt he has felt around this his whole life. This was the final book he wrote before he committed suicide. There is speculation as to why he took his own life, but a strong suggestion is that he did it in part due to this guilt complex.
The book is a tightly-written philosophical masterpiece that is intelligent and even-handed, which, considering it is written by a Holocaust survivor, is quite remarkable. Levi is a towering intellect, and I'll certainly be reading more of his work, but after reading something a little lighter in between. Get ready for the next book review.
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