The Drowned and the Saved

Primo Levi, author of The Drowned and the Saved and other books including If This Is a Man, The Periodic Table, and The Truce, was born in Turin, Italy in 1919. He studied chemistry, and both his writing style and choice of content reflect his scientific approach to observation. Levi participated in the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. These activities, compounded by his Jewish ethnicity, led to his arrest and deportation in February 1944 to Auschwitz, a concentration camp located in German-occupied Poland. Levi died in 1987, having fallen down a stairwell inside his apartment building in Turin, Italy. Many believe his death to be a suicide, but others are certain that Levi was too much of a humanist to have committed suicide and that his fall was an accident. 

Jean Améry, previously known as Hans Mayer, was an Austrian-born philosopher and essayist. Levi devotes an entire chapter of The Drowned and the Saved to Améry’s life and writings. Améry was born in Vienna, Austria in 1912, and he cultivated his intellect by studying literature and philosophy. Though Améry was Jewish by birth, he did not consider himself Jewish, perhaps because he was raised in a family that had informally converted to Christianity.