Moments of Reprieve

Published simultaneously with the reissue of Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening (see above), this new memoir presents 15 additional portraits of unforgettable characters the author encountered at Auschwitz. In Levi's ""moments of reprieve''which he describes as ``bizarre, marginal moments of truce''he encountered Wolf, a Berlin pharmacist who had scabies but didn't scratch; Ezra, the cantor who insisted that his soup ration be saved while he fasted on Yom Kippur; Joel, a blond Jew with a German accent who crossed Europe without being harmed by the Gestapo but was imprisoned by the British in Palestine; Avrom, an innocent young soldier of fortune who became a hero of the Resistance; Grigo, a Gypsy who paid with bread for having an undeliverable letter written; and Rumkowski, chief of the Lodz ghetto, who rode to Auschwitz in a private car. First serial to New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, Dissent and Moment. February