The Truce

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s depiction of the Holocaust and trauma, and it also contains brief references to abuse and domestic violence.

Primo Levi is a Jewish Italian man whose experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camp are documented in his first book, If This Is a Man. In The Truce, he continues his story from the closure of the camp to his return to Turin. As such, Levi plays the role of narrator. He recounts his firsthand experience of being repatriated alongside other displaced people in the aftermath of World War II. He documents the chaos, the confusion, and the emotion of this journey, which takes place after a traumatizing experience in Auschwitz.

In the camps, Levi experienced death and suffering up close. He left Italy alongside 650 other Italian Jews. Only three of them are left alive for the journey home. Levi shares his experiences in explicit detail, wishing to ensure that the lives of those lost in Auschwitz and other places are not forgotten. Those who die on the journey home, for example, are memorialized by Levi so that their deaths are not lost in the confusion of the post-war world.