Editing Primo Levi (section)

=== Early life ===
Levi was born in 1919 in [[Turin]], Italy, at Corso Re Umberto 75, into a [[liberalism|liberal]] Jewish family.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=LEVI, Primo in "Dizionario Biografico"|url=https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/primo-levi_(Dizionario-Biografico)|access-date=2021-09-06|website=[[Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani]]|language=it-IT}}</ref> His father, Cesare Levi (1878–1942), worked for the manufacturing firm [[Ganz]] and spent much of his time working abroad in Hungary, where Ganz was based. Cesare was an avid reader and [[autodidact]]. Levi's mother, Esterina (Ester Luzzati Levi, 1895–1991), known to everyone as Rina, was well educated, having attended the {{lang|it|Istituto Maria Letizia}}. She too was an avid reader, played the piano, and spoke fluent French.<ref name="Angier p50">Angier p. 50.</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite news |last=Motola |first=Gabriel |date=1995 |title=Primo Levi, The Art of Fiction No. 140 |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1670/the-art-of-fiction-no-140-primo-levi |url-access=subscription |access-date=2021-09-06 |work=[[The Paris Review]] |language=en |volume=Spring 1995 |issue=134 |issn=0031-2037}}</ref> The marriage between Rina and Cesare had been arranged by Rina's father.<ref name="Angier p50"/> On their wedding day, Rina's father, Cesare Luzzati, gave Rina the apartment at {{lang|it|Corso Re Umberto}}, where Primo Levi lived for almost his entire life.

In 1921, Anna Maria, Levi's sister, was born, and he remained close to her all her life. In 1925, he entered the {{lang|it|Felice Rignon}} primary school in Turin. A thin and delicate child, he was shy and considered himself ugly, but excelled academically. His school record includes long periods of absence during which he was tutored at home, at first by Emilia Glauda and then by Marisa Zini, daughter of philosopher Zino Zini.<ref>Angier, p. 44.</ref> The children spent summers with their mother in the Waldensian valleys south-west of Turin, where Rina rented a farmhouse. His father remained in the city, partly because of his dislike of the rural life, but also because of his infidelities.<ref>Angier, p. 62.</ref>

In September 1930, Levi entered the {{lang|it|Massimo d'Azeglio}} Royal Gymnasium a year ahead of normal entrance requirements.<ref>Thomson p. 40.</ref> In class, he was the youngest, the shortest and the cleverest, as well as being the only Jew. Only two boys there bullied him for being Jewish, but their animosity was traumatic.<ref>Thomson, p. 42.</ref> In August 1932, following two years attendance at the [[Talmud Torah]] school in Turin to pick up the elements of doctrine and culture, he sang in the local synagogue for his [[Bar Mitzvah]].<ref>Thomson 2019 p. 44:'Half a century later, he could still remember 200 words, but had little idea what they meant. The sole aim of the Torah, it seemed to Levi was to teach boys how to read their prayer books so fluently that their grandparents could reap honours with them on Bar Mitzvah day.'</ref><ref name=":0" /> In 1933, as was expected of all young Italian schoolboys, he joined the [[Avanguardisti]] movement for young [[Italian fascism|Fascists]]. He avoided [[drill team|rifle drill]] by joining the [[ski]] division, and spent every Saturday during the season on the slopes above Turin.<ref>Thomson, p. 48.</ref> As a young boy, Levi was plagued by illness, particularly chest infections, but he was keen to participate in physical activity. In his teens, Levi and a few friends would sneak into a disused sports stadium and conduct athletic competitions.<ref name=":1" />

In July 1934, at the age of 15, he sat the exams for the [[Liceo Classico D'Azeglio]], a [[lyceum]] ([[sixth form college|sixth form]] or [[senior high school]]) specializing in the [[classics]], and was admitted that year. The school was noted for its [[anti-fascism|anti-Fascist]] teachers, among them the philosopher [[Norberto Bobbio]], and [[Cesare Pavese]], who later became one of Italy's best-known novelists.<ref>It is often reported that Pavese was Levi's teacher of Italian. That is refuted strongly by Thomson (2002).</ref> Levi continued to be bullied during his time at the Lyceum, although six other Jews were in his class.<ref>Thomson p. 55.</ref> Upon reading ''Concerning the Nature of Things'' by English scientist [[Sir William Bragg]], Levi decided that he wanted to be a [[chemist]].<ref>''The Search for Roots'', p. 31.</ref>

In 1937, he was summoned before the War Ministry and accused of ignoring a draft notice from the [[Regia Marina|Italian Royal Navy]]. It was one day before he was to write a final examination on Italy's participation in the Spanish Civil War, based on a quote from [[Thucydides]]: "We have the singular merit of being brave to the utmost degree." Distracted and terrified by the draft accusation, he failed the exam—the first poor grade of his life—and was devastated. His father was able to keep him out of the Navy by enrolling him in the Fascist militia (''Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale''). He remained a member through his first year of university, until the passage of the [[Italian Racial Laws]] of 1938 forced his expulsion. Levi later recounted that series of events in the short story ''Fra Diavolo on the Po''.<ref>Sam Magavern, [https://books.google.com/books?id=CZDrLtSGzOIC&pg=PA12 ''Primo Levi’s Universe: A Writer’s Journey,''] Macmillan 2009 p. 12.</ref>

He retook and passed his final examinations and, in October, enrolled at the [[University of Turin]] to study chemistry. As one of 80 candidates, he spent three months taking lectures, and in February, after passing his ''colloquio'' (oral examination), he was selected as one of 20 to move on to the full-time chemistry curriculum.

During the liberal period in Italy, as well as in the first decade of the Fascist regime, Jews held many public positions, and were prominent in literature, science and politics.<ref>''The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution'', translation by John and Anne C. Tedeschi, Wisconsin University Press, Madison 2006, p. 419</ref> In 1929, Mussolini signed the [[Lateran Treaty]] with the [[Catholic Church]], which established Catholicism as the State religion, allowed the Church to influence many sectors of education and public life, and relegated other religions to the status of "tolerated cults". In 1936, Italy's conquest of [[Ethiopia]], and the expansion of what the regime regarded as the Italian "colonial empire", brought the question of "race" to the forefront. In the context set by those events, and the [[Pact of Steel|1939 alliance with Hitler's Germany]], the situation of the Jews of Italy changed radically.

In July 1938, a group of prominent Italian scientists and intellectuals published the "[[Manifesto of Race]]", a mixture of racial and ideological [[antisemitism|antisemitic]] theories from ancient and modern sources. The treatise formed the basis of the Italian Racial Laws of October 1938. After their enactment, Italian Jews lost their basic civil rights, positions in public offices, and their assets. Their books were prohibited, and Jewish writers could no longer publish in magazines owned by [[Aryan race|Aryans]]. Jewish students who had begun their course of study were permitted to continue, but new Jewish students were barred from entering university. Levi had matriculated a year earlier than scheduled, enabling him to take a degree.<ref name=":1" />

In 1939, Levi discovered a passion for mountain hiking.<ref>Thomson p 93.</ref> A friend, Sandro Delmastro, taught him how to hike, and they spent many weekends in the mountains above Turin. Levi later wrote about that time in the chapter "Iron" in ''The Periodic Table:'' “To see Sandro in the mountains reconciled you with the world and made you forget the nightmare weighing on Europe [...] He stirred in me a new communion with earth and sky, in which my need for freedom, the fullness of my powers, and the hunger to understand things that had driven me to chemistry converged.”<ref>''Il sistema periodico'' in ''Primo Levi, Opere'' Einaudi vol. 1 1987 pp. 464–473 [470]. The vignette commemorates the memory of his friend, who was indifferent to Levi's Jewish origins, and who was the first resistance fighter of the anti-fascist [[Action Party (Italy)|Partito d'Azione]]'s ''Piemont Military Command'' to fall in action when he was shot in the neck by a burst of a machine-gun wielded by a 'monstruous child-executor', a paid-up adolescent henchman of the diehard [[Italian Social Republic|Republic of Salò]] in April 1944 while escaping from detention. (p. 473)</ref>

In June 1940, as an ally of Germany, Italy declared war against Britain and France, and the first [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] [[airstrike|air raids]] on Turin began two days later. Levi's studies continued during the bombardments. The family suffered additional strain as his father became bedridden with [[bowel cancer]].