A Man of Few Words: The Bricklayer of Auschwitz Who Saved Primo Levi

'Nobody knows how much I owe that man,' Primo Levi said of the bricklayer who saved his life at Auschwitz. 'I could never repay him.'

Levi was referring to Lorenzo Perrone, who for six months risked his own life to smuggle food, clothing and letters to Levi and other prisoners. Without Perrone, Levi could not have survived to write '

If This Is a Man, one of the most influential memoirs by a Holocaust survivor.

In A Man of Few Words, Carlo Greppi pieces together the life of Perrone, a near-des...