Auschwitz was abandoned by the German SS guards on January 18, 1945 and it was ten days before Soviet troops arrived to rescue the prisoners. Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who was a prisoner at the Monowitz labor camp in the Auschwitz complex. In 1947, Levi wrote a poem entitled “If this is a man,” which is included in a book published in America under the title “Survival in Auschwitz, the Nazi Assault on Humanity.”
Chapter 17 of the book is entitled, “The Story of Ten Days.” This is the story of what happened during the ten days that the prisoners were on their own, without the Germans to keep order and feed them. There are some surprising revelations in this chapter. (more…)
