from the camp in January 1945 he returned home to Turin, Italy. Levi attained world-wide

fame for his writings after the war, especially for his book If this is a Man (also published

as Survival in Auschwitz). He wrote the poem "Shema" in January 1946.

You who live secure In your warm houses

Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider, whether this is a man, Who labours in the mud

Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider whether this is a woman, Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been: I commend these words to you.

Engrave them on your hearts When you are in your house, when you walk

on your way, When you go to bed, when you rise.

Repeat them to your children. Or may your house crumble,

Disease render you powerless, Your offspring avert their faces from you.

...

The poem Shema was written in January 1946, which was a very short time after the end

of the Holocaust. Primo Levi was liberated from Auschwitz in January 1945 and this is

a very early warning to the world, to his readers, to convey what had just happened

in Europe; to convey the potential for human evil.

When one teacher reads this poem in the classroom, there are certain main points that come out:

The first one is the first word of the poem. Primo Levi starts with "You", which means

that you, everybody in the world, all the readers of the poem, should be engaged in

conveying what had happened in Europe. This includes obviously the absolute imperative

to talk and teach about the potential of human beings for the cruelty that he had just witnessed

and experienced himself.

Primo Levi actually divided the poem into three main parts: The first four lines are

his approach path to the general public, to the people that are reading the poem. The

middle part of the poem is a very short but extreme description of the Holocaust. And

the last part of the poem is where he invokes the prayer, the central prayer in the Jewish

liturgy, "Shema" or "Listen", "Hear! O Israel The Lord our God..." and he uses that to bring

this injunction, this order, to talk and teach about the potential of human beings for the

cruelty that he had just witnessed and experienced himself.

When I read at the end of the poem the threats that he uses, if we do not teach about what

happened in Europe a year ago, I feel the plight and the pain of the survivor coming

through. And I think this is a very important point to emphasize, because it's very difficult

for us after the Holocaust to imagine the extent of the tragedy that they went through

physically during the Holocaust.