The Periodic Table is a unique work. I say this not because a Holocaust survivor wrote it but because it was written in an uncommonly creative style. Primo Levi was a chemist before his arrest and subsequent transfer to Auschwitz. He owed a debt to chemistry for his survival at the concentration camp. Had he not been given the chance to work at the camp’s chemical laboratory, he probably wouldn’t have lived until the Russians liberated it. On his return, he resumed work again as a chemist, got married, and raised a family. All his life, chemistry had been an interest and passion. So, it was natural for him to combine the chemical elements of the Periodic Table with the story of his life. The autobiography has twenty-one chapters, and each is named after an element. Levi interweaves his stories with elemental properties to bring us an incredibly creative narrative of his life.
Levi begins his autobiographical narrative with an introduction to his ancestry in Piedmont, Italy, showing their marginalized existence. Then he proceeds to narrate how he developed a passion for chemistry and the challenges he faced to earn his degree in chemistry from the University of Turin. The racial laws introduced in 1938 by Mussolini’s fascist government stripped Jewish people of their basic human rights. Education and work were denied to them. They were prohibited from contracting mixed marriages. Jewish people always had a marginal existence, which Levi says they accepted. But this was a next-level cruelty from which the community severely suffered. His degree certificate bore the official remark “of Jewish race”, thus effectively barring him from securing work. In Levi’s own words, the certificate was a “dubious document, half glory and half derision, half absolution and half condemnation”.
The narrative continues with his struggle to secure a job, his frustrated love for a co-worker due to racial prohibitions, and his involvement with the anti-fascist resistance movement, his subsequent capture and transfer to Auschwitz. Levi’s time at Auschwitz is excluded from this autobiography, since he had written a comprehensive account of it in If This Is a Man, and so, the narrative jumps back to his life as a chemist back in post-war Italy. Levi then chronicles his progress as a chemist and eventually finding love, which considerably helps heal his traumatic experiences at the concentration camp and boosts his will to live. He concludes his life account by narrating his correspondence with the German chemist who supervised the laboratory in which Levi worked at Auschwitz. Levi comes across the man in a chemical dispute with a German firm of suppliers. Levi writes a personal letter to him requesting accountability for his involvement with the SS. He denies any knowledge of the cruelties and horrors of the camp and seeks self-absolution, which deeply disturbs Levi. The chemist (named Dr. Müller) insists on meeting Levi, but his death (presumed suicide) prevents them from any physical meeting, symbolizing the irremediable nature of the historical wounds.
Three chapters of the book are dedicated to fictitious stories, but the work can be concluded as an autobiography. It is a deeply moving account. The narrative is light in the beginning, but this tone of levity soon changes into a deeply reflective account full of quiet gravity. The book doesn’t call for sympathy but for understanding. Above all, it’s an unofficial treatise, along with If This Is a Man, that cries out to the world that such an atrocious history should never be repeated. Unfortunately, it looks like in this third decade of the 21st century, we are slowly forgetting the lessons taught by history.
Rating: 4/5
