If This Is a Man

If This Is a Man ( ; United States title: Survival in Auschwitz) is a memoir by Jewish Italian writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Monowitz) from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. Background to the memoir Primo Levi was born in 1919 in Turin. His forebears were Piedmontese Jews. He studied chemistry at the University of Turin, graduating summa cum laude in 1942, notwithstanding the restrictions imposed by Mussolini's racial laws. In 1942 he found a position with a Swiss drug company in Milan. With the German occupation of northern and central Italy in 1942, Levi joined a partisan group in Aosta Valley in the Alps. He was arrested in December 1943 and transported to Auschwitz in February 1944. He remained there until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. If This Is a Man recounts his experiences in the camp.