Imagine you are going to be gassed and cremated for no reason other than collective madness and incredulous stupidity. Primo Levi, back then a 23-year old Italian chemist was arrested and later transported to Auschwitz in 1944. He avoided the fate of being sent to the gas chamber and was one of the few prisoners liberated from the camp and return to Turin, Italy in 1945. He chalked up his survival to sheer good luck. In the postscript, he mentions he thought of the hellish experience as going to university, where he learned many things about man and about the world. With every ounce of dignity and all sense of individuality stripped, he still believed in reason and repressed the hatred within himself, reminding himself that even though there is cowardice and savagery, selflessness and courage exist in us too.