"While awaiting return home in a Russian-administered holding camp in Katowice, Poland, in 1945, Primo Levi, along with his friend, the doctor Leonardo De Benedetti, was asked to provide a report on living conditions in Auschwitz for the Russian authorities. Published the following year, it was then forgotten and has until now remained unknown to a wider public. Here, it is published for the first time in the English language. " "Dating from the weeks and months immediately after the war, Auschwitz Report represents a return to the very earliest phase of Holocaust testimony. It details the authors' deportation to Auschwitz, selection for work and extermination, everyday life in the camp, and the organization and working of the gas chambers. It constitutes Levi's first attempts to come to terms with events that would drive him to create some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature and testimony. "--Jacket.