Truce / Primo Levi, translated by Ann Goldstein 200 pp.

This is the second title in volume one of this Complete Works.  Published in the 60s, it chronicles the 6-month period from the German departure from Auschwitz in late winter 1945 to Levi's return to Turin in the fall of that year.  When the SS abandoned the complex of camps that was Auschwitz, the great majority of prisoners were forced to march out, barely dressed and sometimes shoeless in the snow.  Most died.  At that time, Levi, who had been working in a chemistry lab at the camp, happened to be in the infirmary with scarlet fever and like other sick prisoners he was left behind.   Eventually Soviet troops came and Levi and others were shuttled to various sites within Soviet territory before being sent home.

It's obvious that at the time of this writing Levi maintained great affection for the Russian people, if not for the Soviet Union.   The chaotic (and often alcoholic) Russian management of these thousands of displaced persons would make for comical reading if the context were different.  Levi depicts his caretakers as spirited, generous, and, largely, benign, if exceedingly careless (Levi's word).  It's stunning to contemplate the situation of Levi and his fellows at the end of the war.  They were sick, weak, entirely without possessions or status, and  more than a thousand miles from home.  Considering their extreme vulnerability, their treatment at Russian hands seems admirable.  Levi fully evokes the claustrophobia and frustration of his odyssey in a way that will be hard to forget.