Primo Levi
Primo Levi (Turin, 31 July 1919 – Turin, 11 April 1987) was a Turin-born chemist and writer, a survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp and the author of If This Is a Man. He was born to Cesare Levi, an engineer, and Ester Luzzati, both Piedmontese Jews[1]. Turin was his city for his entire life: apart from his imprisonment and a year spent in Milan, he always lived in the same apartment at corso Re Umberto 75, in the Crocetta district[2].
Education and the racial laws
In 1934 he enrolled at the secondary school named after Massimo d'Azeglio, where he graduated in 1937; he then went on to study chemistry at the University of Turin. The racial laws of 1938 made it difficult for him to find a thesis supervisor, but in July 1941 he graduated with top marks[1]. In his recollections, the chemistry institute's library appears as a nearly impenetrable place; for his thesis work he found a welcome at the Institute of Experimental Physics, under the guidance of an assistant[2]. That same year, 1941, he worked in an asbestos quarry near Lanzo, and in 1942 he moved to Milan to work at the Wander pharmaceutical factory[3].
The Resistance and deportation
After 8 September 1943 he joined a partisan group in the Aosta Valley[3]. On 13 December he was arrested by Fascist militia near Saint-Vincent, and at the end of January 1944 he was transferred to the Fossoli internment camp, near Carpi[1]. On the journey from Aosta to Fossoli, at a winter sunset, the train stopped at Chivasso: from the station Levi managed to catch sight of the Mole Antonelliana, and he recalled that moment as the wrench, the farewell to the city[2]. On 22 February 1944 he left Fossoli with a convoy of about 650 Italian Jews bound for Auschwitz[1].
Levi remained in the camp until it was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945. The journey home was long: he returned to Turin on 19 October 1945[1], arriving at Porta Nuova station[2]. That journey across Eastern Europe would become the subject of The Truce.
The chemist of Settimo
In January 1946 he joined the Duco-Montecatini paint factory; in 1947 he married Lucia Morpurgo[1]. In December of that same year he was hired as a chemist at SIVA, a paint manufacturer on the outskirts of Turin, where he became technical director and later general manager; he retired in 1975 and remained a consultant for another two years[3]. For years he commuted between Crocetta and the plant in Settimo Torinese, and it was during those journeys that the pseudonym "Damiano Malabaila" was born, under which he signed his first fantastic tales[2]. In 1986 the American writer Philip Roth, who had come to interview him, visited the Settimo factory with him; the conversation was later partly published by La Stampa[4].
The double identity of chemist and writer was a defining trait for him. In a 1986 interview with Giorgio Martellini he said: "I feel like a centaur. Because I am double, hybrid, cloven. I am Italian and Jewish, a chemist and a writer"[2].
The books
If This Is a Man was published in 1947 by the small publisher De Silva and was only reissued in 1958 by Einaudi, which has since made it a classic[1]. Of the writing of those months Levi recalled: "by writing I found brief peace and felt myself becoming a man again"[3]. These were followed by The Truce (1963, Campiello Prize), The Periodic Table (1975), in which each chapter takes its name from a chemical element, The Wrench (1978, Strega Prize in 1979), the partisan novel If Not Now, When? (1982, Viareggio and Campiello Prizes), and finally the essay The Drowned and the Saved (1986)[1].
Alongside his books there was also his work as a journalist. Levi wrote for newspapers and magazines, but above all for La Stampa, from 1964 to 1984; many of those articles were collected in Other People's Trades, published by Einaudi in 1985[5]. The collaboration continued until 1986, the year of the collection Racconti e saggi[3].
Primo Levi's Turin
The city runs through his entire body of work. The opening essay of Other People's Trades is devoted to the house on corso Re Umberto: a brick building constructed shortly before the advent of reinforced concrete, with a few Art Nouveau details around the windows, which came through the bombings with some damage to its window frames. Levi compares himself to molluscs that, after their larval stage, attach themselves to a rock and never move again[6]. His writings feature his maternal grandfather's fabric shop on the old via Roma, the Caffè Fiorio on via Po, the Teatro Carignano, the Valentino of his childhood, and a workshop in Crocetta, in an alley near piazza della Crocetta[2]. In a 1978 interview with Giorgio De Rienzo, he declared: "My attachment to Turin is total: you may well write that I am a thoroughly assimilated man"[2].
Death
On the morning of 11 April 1987 Levi was found dead in the entrance hall of the building at corso Re Umberto 75, at the foot of the stairwell, after a fall from the third floor[7]; his death was ruled a suicide[1]. The news spread quickly. His friend Mario Rigoni Stern suggested that the ringing of the postman's doorbell might have awakened in him the memory of the wake-up calls in the camp[7].
Legacy
In April 2008 the International Primo Levi Studies Centre was founded in Turin, bringing together Italian and foreign editions of his works, translations, criticism in multiple languages, and audiovisual materials, and offering consultation and lending services[8]. It is based at via del Carmine 13; the City of Turin holds a 28.99% stake, and since July 2024 the board has been chaired by Fabio Levi[9].
Pages linking here
- Avigliana
- Biennale Democrazia
- Chivasso
- Croce Verde Torino
- Geographies – Climate and Bodies in Relation (October-December 2026)
- Giulio Einaudi
- Italo Calvino
- Mario Soldati
- Monumental Cemetery of Turin
- Natalia Ginzburg
- Polo del '900
- San Salvario
- Settimo Torinese
- Stazione di Porta Nuova
- Università degli Studi di Torino
Related articles: Avigliana, Chivasso, Giulio Einaudi, Settimo Torinese, Stazione di Porta Nuova, Università degli Studi di Torino