Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies

Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man is a central work in understanding the way in which the subjective memory of a Holocaust survival receives a general meaning. This requires a context in which the duty to prevent the repetition of the tragic events endured by European Jews becomes a universal responsibility we must assume. This text examines the process of dehumanization and total degradation of a human being in the conditions of the death camp, and examines the antidote that Levi proposes for escaping the state of existential pathology. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which Levi, who embraces secular humanist values, uses religious background and religious symbolic structures in order to provide additional understanding of the fact that in the absence of God, the world itself becomes void of humanity.