Primo Levi: The Double Bond, A Biography, Carole Angier, c. 2002.

Primo Levi: The Double Bond, A Biography, Carole Angier, c. 2002. BLEV.

Lived 65 of his 67 years of life in Turin, Italy.

Worked as a chemist by day and wrote at night in his study that had been his childhood bedroom.

His memoirs: Survival in Auschwitz, The Reckoning, and his autobiographical masterpiece, The Periodic Table.

"The whole world was shocked when he died in 1987, apparently having thrown himself into the stairwell of the house in which he had been born.

Narrative: 731 pages.

Total with notes, bibliography, index: 898 pages.

From the preface:

Primo Levi was a Jew; so were -- naturally -- all his relatives, and many of his friends. But aas one of them (a Jew) said to me, when Jews assimilate they become 110 percent like their neighbours. And this being Italy, that doesn't mean like their fellow Italians, but like their fellow Romans, or Milanese, or Turinese. Roman Jews are more like Roman non-Jews than like other non-Roman Jews; and the same is true of the Turinese. It is even truer of the Turinese, becausue Jews have played a bigger and prouuder part in the histoory of Turin than of any other Italian city. In that great reserve of his, therefore -- as in several other things -- Prio Levi was bing a typical, a conventional Turinese. And so were his friends and family.

The Auschwitz "chapter" of his life begins with Chapter 7, page 230, and extends through page 368, with chapter ten, liberation, beginning on page 369.

Somewhere around November, 1943, Italian fascists started rounding up "partisans," the Jews. 

In / near Aosta, Primo with others, arrested by Italian fascists. In a local jail / cell.

On/about January 26, 1944, Primo and the others put on a train to the concentration camp of Fossoli. Northern Italy, inland. 

Towards evening they passed through the station of Chivassa, a few miles from Turin.

Aosta: in the mountains, about 100 miles northwest of Turin. Then from Turin, almost directly east towards Bologna, 250 miles, and then an abrupt turn to the north at Modena, another 25 miles to Fossoli. 

So, a broad, "mild" arc, Turin to Milan to Venice, with Bologna southwest of Venice, about two-thirds of the way to Florence, and then Pisa. A long way across the Alps and Switzerland, but Fossili was due south of Munich.

A description of Fossili begins on page 264, chapter 8, dated February, 1944.

Fossoli is a northern suburb of Carpi.

Tuesday, February 22, 1944, put on buses in Fossoli to be bussed to Carpi and then from there by train to Auschwitz. At the time, they had not heard of Auschwitz.

Then the very detailed diary of the trip, across the Brenner Pass. 

While serving in Germany, our family crossed the Brenner Pass at least twice. We never knew this was the "Jewish" route from Italy to Germany. Wow. Amazing how so much was "hidden" from us. 

Four days and nights.

Reached Auschwitz, Saturday night, Febuary 26, 1944. 

Arrival, p. 288.

Entry, p. 291.

Initiation, p. 293.

March, April, 1944, p. 308. March and April, 1944, Silesia. Auschwitz, Poland; to the north, about 24 miles, Silesia, Poland, winter.

Monowitz. Link here.

Monowitz, huge hospital.

When patients exceeded more than 500 - 600 there was "a selection.

The single largest group of people admitted ot Monowitz were doctors and medical students: out of 10,0000 to 12,000 prisoners, estimates that 2,000 were doctors. At the very most, twenty of these could work in the hospital at any one time. The rest: manual labor. Page 311.

Vanda and Luciana spent a month in the Quarantine Block in Birkenau, page 313.

Many locations mentioned.

May, 1944: at the end of two months, of the original 96 of Primo's transport (one cattle car), only 40 were still alive.

KB (hospital). "Krakenbau Auschwitz hospital."

June 7, 1944, D-Day landings. Word had reached the camps.

Aha, chemists and pharmacists needed for Buna (Monowitz?) and Primo and Alberto applied.

August - September, 1944. Turn for the worse. Phenylbeta. Rubber factory.

Allied bombing of the area.

October, 1944. By then, even the "rulers" of Auschwitz knew the end was near. More of Primo's friends die.

November and December.

Chemical Kommando doing better than ever.

Ten Days, Infectious Ward, KB, January 11 - 16, 1945.

January 18, 1945: the march with other prisoners from Auschwitz. As many as 60,000 eventually in the march. Russians were advancing quickly.

Liberation. The Truce. January 27, 1945 - October 19, 1945.

Map of Primo's march from Auschwitz deep into Russia, south of Smolensk, and then eventually all the way back to Turin.

Some day I will have to return to this book, and read the last chapter, "The Double Bond" about the last lion in Primo's life, a woman he called Gisella.