Il libro più decisivo e importante di tutti, per me. L'ho pensato la prima volta che l'ho letto, più di vent'anni fa, e lo penso ancora adesso.

So poignant that the words in this book resounds to this day. We should all read Primo Levi’s thoughts about privilege, responsibility and his warnings on the dangers of the “prophets and enchanters who speak and write ‘beautiful words’ unsupported by intelligent reasons”

If you study WW II, you must read this book. It answers questions both spoken and unspoken.

I sommersi e i salvati, che era fra l'altro il titolo che Levi aveva pensato per Se questo è un uomo, è un libro speculare al primo pubblicato da Levi, e in un certo senso lo completa: se il primo è segnato da un'urgente e giusta esigenza di raccontare, questo è ragionato, e non si basa tanto sul racconto dell'esperienza diretta dell'autore, quanto sulle riflessioni su Auschwitz, permesse anche dai molti decenni trascorsi intanto.

wow. never has a book made me think so much about human nature. this is probably the most thought provoking book I’ve ever read- in Levi’s attempts to understand the actions of his oppressors he revealed a lot about power dynamics, oppression, and morality

This desire for simplification is justified, but the same does not always apply to simplification itself, which is a working hypothesis, useful as long as it is recognized as such and not mistaken for reality.

Here, as with other phenomena, we are dealing with a paradoxical analogy between victim and oppressor, and we are anxious to be clear: both are in the same trap, but it is the oppressor, and [they] alone, who has prepared it and activated it, and if [they] suffer[] from this, it is right that [they] should suffer; and it is iniquitous that the victim should suffer from it, as [they do] indeed suffer from it, even at a distance of decades.

Every victim is to be mourned, and every survivor is to be helped and pitied, but not all their acts should be set forth as examples.

I've wasted a lot of time over the years pandering to people who were around for the entertainment rather than the maturation. For too long, I stagnated in the idea that I not only had to say what I believed, but also had to convince every single one of my audience to feel the same way, not on subjects of favorite food or most disliked pop star but whether or not certain sectors of the population should be afforded the same human treatment as the artificial norm. I've gotten past that for the most part, and coming to this work when I did simply confirmed my suspicion of those who decry Tumblr as a hive mind while simultaneously depending on others to build a better future, for the words Primo Levi penned in 1986 and most assuredly cogitated in a far earlier period can confirm everything I've argued for and lost friends over and eventually alienated the silent masses with. The work's not perfect, as in addition to the usual ableist mumbo jumbo there's the mystical way in which generally worded arguments somehow pass over various nationalizities and socioeconomic systems as many a European-birthed morality bulwark does, but Levi is not a saint, and the skeleton he built will always need the flesh that has been brought forth between now and the time he put forth his incalculably valuable philosophy. It is telling, however, that the most popular quote of this work is when he speaks of being a nonbeliever. Out of context as it is, I don't think the majority of them liking it knows what it means.

[I]t was not a matter of thrift but a precise intent to humiliate.

Privilege, by definition, defends and protects privilege.

The ascent of the privileged, not only in the Lager but in all human coexistence, is an anguishing but unfailing phenomenon: only in utopias is it absent. It is the duty of [the] righteous [] to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.

The institution represented an attempt to shift onto others—specifically, the victims—the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.

Similar to [b:Black Reconstruction in America|184612|Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880|W.E.B. Du Bois|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389457839s/184612.jpg|178433], the quotes derived, as well as text itself, is worth far more than anything I have to say about it. Similarly as well to how BR lays out history as a testament to the nativity that proclaims time equals progress, [b:The Drowned and the Saved|6176|The Drowned and the Saved|Primo Levi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390361633s/6176.jpg|1427999] identifies the kernels of calamity lying in the bosom of complacent types who expect the likes of Antifa and co. to stem the bloody tides and carry them in a polite and apolitical fashion towards a new and more ethical future. If everyone practiced as exactly a self-reflexive gaze as Levi puts down in these pages, there would be no need to go to war after the genocide had already begun. However, little by little, drop by drop, the slaughter of mentally ill people and poor people and trans people and occupied people paves the way towards the normalization of speech that calls for such violence against populations which turns into books, which turns into platforms, which turn into political victories, which turn into reality. All it takes is an old ingrained prejudice, lax public integrity, a socioeconomic and/or political opportunity (usually a crisis), and a can do attitude when it comes to the propaganda and the jargon and the us vs them reasoning that uses the excuse of natural selection as a means to a future, and suddenly no one is safe and everyone is complicit. You can't tell me hardworking and morally upright adults will prevent this from happening, as it's hardworking adults who dehumanize on a small scale and, when this is pointed out, mewl and puke and sea lion their way out, refusing to believe another's pain is more important than their pride. You can't tell me someone who fails on such a small level as this will do any better on the larger and more genocidal ones. Levi doesn't render his foreshadowing completely intersectional, but his bias does not irredeemably compromise his truth.

One must benefit in order to feel beneficent, and feeling beneficent is gratifying even for a corrupt satrap.

It is naive, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims: on the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself, and this all the more when they are available, blank, and lacking a political or moral armature.

I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.

This is my first favorite and five star of 2018, which is a fucking shame because this book is terrifying. People want the world to survive Trump as US president, but they want it as a either a slow abolishment of hate without them lifting a finger, or a WWIII where the villains are concretely villains and there's character development to be had by the good guys. The world is filled with children with gavels and guards and guns, and I'm not talking about the mentally disabled adults who will be the first to be shot down if Hitler's trajectory is to be studied as a model. In the words of Ursula Hegi, one will adapt and adapt and adapt by saying this is too controversial, this is too violent, this is too hasty, this is too presumptive, this is too soon, this is not enough, this is my president, this is my boss, this is my friend, until there is nothing left, as if all of this hadn't happened before. At this stage, it will happen again. It is, for all intents and purposes, gift wrapped.

I frequently noticed in some of my companions (sometimes even in myself) a curious phenomenon: the ambition of a "job well done" is so deeply rooted as to compel one "to do well" even enemy jobs, harmful to your people and your side, so that a conscious effort is necessary to do them "badly."

[T]hey realized that testimony was an act of war against fascism.

Obtaining a passport and entry visa is much easier than it was then, so why aren't we going? Why aren't we leaving our country? Why aren't we fleeing "before"?