The Truce

The Truce (also known as The Reawakening) is a 1963 book by Italian writer Primo Levi. The Truce is a sequel to If This Is a Man, Levi’s firsthand account of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. In The Truce, Levi tells the story of his long journey back to Italy. The book was adapted as a film in 1997.

This guide uses the 2005 Abacus edition of The Truce, translated into English by Stuart Woolf.

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

Summary

In January 1945, Primo Levi is a Jewish Italian man who is a prisoner in the Auschwitz extermination camp. As World War II draws to a close, the Germans flee the camp and leave behind the sick, starving prisoners who can no longer be used as enslaved labor. The sick prisoners are then liberated by the soldiers of the Red Army.

Primo Levi is sick during this period and he remembers the slow arrival of local Polish people and Russian soldiers, bringing supplies to the starving people. The Russians organize an evacuation of the survivors. The survivors are clothed, fed, and bathed, then their medical issues are treated. There are very few doctors for the many sick people; many more people die of the brutal conditions inflicted on them prior to the Nazi departure. Among them are children who were born and raised in the camp.

After a month, Levi recovers enough to walk. He escapes work duty and heads to a camp for displaced peoples, administrated by the Russian forces. During this time, he meets a Greek man named Mordo Nahum, who teaches him about survival in difficult conditions. They spend a week traveling together, bargaining and selling anything they can for a profit. They reach Cracow and search for food and business opportunities. Reaching a camp for displaced people, Levi meets up with a doctor named Leonardo. As a trained chemist, Levi offers to work as Leonardo’s assistant in a makeshift clinic because he wants to be useful. They spend weeks in this clinic, during which time Levi realizes the extent that his traumatic experience in Auschwitz has changed him.

Levi is friends with an Italian petty criminal named Cesare. Having met in the camps, they reunite on the journey home. Cesare’s schemes and scams fascinate Levi, who is often enlisted to translate on Cesare’s behalf even though Levi does not speak Polish or Russian. While staying in a town named Katowice, they learn about the end of World War II. Everyone celebrates, including survivors and soldiers. With so little news from Italy, however, Levi and his fellow Italians worry about the repatriation process. The Russians say that they will be sent back to Italy but no plans seem to be set. After the celebrations, Levi becomes sick again and his friends help him to recover.

The Italians board a train to a camp for displaced people. The train ride is long, difficult, and caught in a flurry of bureaucratic absurdity. The conditions are rough but Cesare helps to entertain Levi and the other survivors. Eventually, they arrive at a station near Starye Dorogi. They are sent on a long march to the camp, during which time Levi and his friends peel away from the main group and try to buy a chicken from a local village, though none of the villagers understand them. The Italians stay at Starye Dorogi for several months. The Russians assure them that they will be sent home, though no timeframe seems to exist for their repatriation.

The survivors entertain themselves with variety performances and movie screenings. They set up an improvised community, with Levi and Leonardo reopening their small clinic. At Starye Dorogi, the Italians forage for food in the local woods and hunt the horses that belong to the returning Red Army soldiers. They are still affected by their time in Auschwitz, eating as much as they can because they still fear starvation. Cesare runs many schemes and scams to entertain himself at the camp. He often runs these scams on the passing Red Army soldiers, who are far away by the time they realize that they have been tricked. At the same time, Levi is one of many survivors who feel nostalgic for home. This painful desire to return is marked by an uncertainty of what home will be like, should they ever reach it.

The Russians promise that the Italians will soon be repatriated. Gradually, Levi comes to realize that—to the Russians—promises of movement and action in the following days are not to be taken literally. Rather, he must broadly accept that the repatriation will happen in the future at some uncertain date and time, according to the whims of Soviet bureaucracy. Eventually, a train is arranged and the Italians leave Starye Dorogi. The train does not travel directly to Italy, however. They take a winding, confusing route through Eastern Europe, then through Austria, then Germany, until they reach the Italian border.

Levi eventually arrives back in Turin, splitting from his associates as they each return to their hometowns. In Turin, he reunites with his family and reflects on how Auschwitz has forever changed him.