If This is a Man

The title If This Is a Man is a conditional clause (if this is a man). The memoir is concerned with the conditional state of manhood and how manhood can be determined.

The camps are segregated by sex, and Levi discusses men and manhood specifically, since his experience in the Lager is exclusively with male prisoners. Levi insists, based on his experience at Auschwitz, that men can become non-men. The definition of manhood—and the oppositional state of a “non-man”—is sometimes hard to grasp, however.

In the case of Lorenzo, manhood is being a genuinely good person, helping Levi simply because Levi needs his help. He brings Levi food for six months, gives him a vest, and helps him send a postcard, and “for all this he neither asked nor accepted any reward” (139). Manhood here is defined by concern and action for the other, even in the midst of great personal risk:

the personages in these pages are not men […] Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man (142).

Lorenzo’s care for Levi reminds him that he himself is a man.