Debate re-opens on Primo Levi's death

Auschwitz is preserved as a memorial to Holocaust victims

By Arts Correspondent Rebecca Jones

The Italian writer who survived the horrors of Auschwitz, Primo Levi, is back in the news with the publication of a new anthology of literature that shaped him.

But the book, called The Search for Roots, has re-opened a debate about the nature of his death in 1987, apparently by suicide.

What a writer leaves, however they die, are their words and every reader has the choice whether you accept those words and find them them valid or not.

Peter Forbes, editor of The Search For Roots

Writer, poet, survivor - Primo Levi was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. He was also a chemist - and it was his science rather than his art that saved him.

"Three of us, we were 10,000 inmates of this camp, succeeded in passing this chemical examination and so I was able to spend the last two winter months, November and December 1944, in a chemical laboratory," said Levi.

"Perhaps that contributed to saving my life. It was awfully cold - minus 20 centigrade," he said.

Compelled

On his release Primo Levi felt compelled to record his experiences. Within 10 months he'd written his book, If This is a Man.

"It is lucky that it is not windy today. Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy," wrote Levi.

More than 40 years after walking out of Auschwitz alive, Primo Levi apparently killed himself in 1987. It is widely believed he threw himself down the stairwell of his apartment in Turin.

He was suffering from depression - and Carole Angier, who is writing a new biography of Levi, wonders what role Auschwitz played in that.

"If the memories of Auschwitz, the experiences of Auschwitz led directly to his death - that is the point at which people say well if he couldn't live with his memories, how can we? If he couldn't survive Auschwitz how can we?

"Is his great message to us which is essentially Auschwitz is survivable, that we can learn lessons from it, we can learn not to do it again?"

But what if Primo Levi didn't take his own life?

There was no note. The post mortem proved inconclusive. He'd written he didn't think he was susceptible to suicide.

David Mendel, a retired doctor who became friends with Primo Levi towards the end of his life, thinks his death was an accident.

Anti-depressants

Mendel's theory centres around Levi's medical prescription.

"He was being treated with anti depressants a very large dose and these cause as a side effect lowering of blood pressure and this makes the blood supply to the brain inadequate and the patient suffers from dizziness," he said.

"I think that feeling bad, he went out into the corrridor to call for help, and grasped the rail of the bannister which is extremely low level... and he lost control of himself and fell."

The truth is, we may never know what really happened.

But Peter Forbes, who has edited and translated the new anthology of Levi's favourite writings called The Search for Roots, says whether he committed suicide or not, his message remains the same.

"What a writer leaves, however they die, are their words and every reader has the choice whether you accept those words and find them them valid or not," he said.