Summary
Edmund de Waal chooses a writer he believes is one of the greatest of the modern age - Primo Levi, author of the Periodic Table. Born in 1919 in Turin, Levi was an Italian Jew, one of the few deported to Auschwitz who would escape alive.
Primo Levi's account of his time in the camp, If This Is a Man, made him one of the first writers to document the Holocaust and it established his name around the world. But Levi was not just a writer. He was a chemist, which gave him the skills that helped save his life in Auschwitz. It was also a day job he never gave up, and his passion for science remained a life-long pursuit.
After the War, Levi returned to Turin, married, had a family and wrote books in his spare time. He also became an enthusiastic letter-writer, corresponding with a new generation of Germans, to help them better understand the effects of the Nazi regime. Yet from his youth, Levi suffered from depression. In 1987 he took his own life, throwing himself down the stairwell in the house where he'd been born.
Ceramicist and author Edmund de Waal joins Matthew Parris to discuss how Levi's work inspired The Hare With Amber Eyes - his own memoir of his family's history as Jews in 19th and 20th century Europe. And biographer Ian Thomson, one of the last to interview Levi, explains why we shouldn't confuse Levi the writer with Levi the man.
Producer: Lizz Pearson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult? |
| 0:06.0 | What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are? |
| 0:10.0 | I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas. |
| 0:16.4 | Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth. |
| 0:23.0 | Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003. |
| 0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.0 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. |
| 0:32.0 | We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:36.0 | It's morning, Northern Italy, October 1945, and a man picks his way across those sleeping on the platforms of Turin's main railway station. |
| 0:46.0 | The man is bearded, malnourished. He's making his way home but unsure that what he remembers as home will await him. |
| 0:54.7 | It is two years since he left Italy, his native country, two years that will change his life |
| 0:59.7 | forever, that already have, two years that have destroyed much of Europe. Finally he arrives at his |
| 1:06.6 | destination, the house he was born in and grew up in. The concierge meets him. She has known him since he was a boy, but she does not recognize him |
| 1:16.0 | this stranger. He looks different now, of course, for Auschwitz has changed him. |
| 1:22.6 | There's a silence. |
| 1:24.4 | Then in a moment she knows and calls for his mother, Madame Allevy, Madame Allevy, |
| 1:29.2 | Prima has come home. |
| 1:32.6 | Our great life this week is the man who first documented the Holocaust in his book, If |
| 1:38.1 | this is a man. |
| 1:39.5 | An Italian, also Jewish, he was a lifelong atheist, a working chemist and one of the world's greatest |
| 1:45.2 | scientific writers. |
| 1:47.1 | The periodic table has been called the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of |
... |
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