Primo Levi
In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five year old chemist and "Italian citizen of Jewish race" was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from native Turin to Auschwitz. Levi spent ten months in the German death camp. He later recounted the trials of those months in his book Survival at Auschwitz. The events that transpired during his time at the Nazi death camp not only affected his life in the material and physical dimensions, but permanetly altered his understanding of humanity.
"What we have so far said and will say concerns the ambiguous life of the Lager. In our days many men have lived in this cruel manner, crushed against the bottom, but each for a relatively short period; so that we can perhaps ask ourselves if it is necessary or good to retain any memory of this exceptional human state. To this question we feel that we have to reply in the affirmative. We are in fact convinced that no human experience is without meaning or unworth of analysis and that fundamental values, even if they are not positive, can be deduced from this particular world which we are describing. "Thousands of individuals, differing in age, condition, origin, language, culture and customs, are enclosed within barbed wire: there they live a regular, controlled life which is identical for all and inadequate to all needs, and which is more rigorous than any experimenter could have set up to establish what is essential and what is adventitious to the conduct of the human animal in the struggle for life." (Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz)