Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish anti-fascist arrested in 1943, during the Second World War. The memoir “If This Is a Man,” written soon after Levi's liberation from the Auschwitz concentration camp, not only provides readers with Levi's personal testimony of his experience in Auschwitz, but also invites readers to consider the implications of life in the concentration camp for our understanding of human identity. In Levi's words, the memoir was written to provide "documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind." The lack of emotional words and use of distant tones in Levi's first-person narrative allow readers to visualize the cold, harsh reality of Auschwitz without taking away historical credibility. Levi's use of poetic and literary devices such as list, repetition, and symbolism in the removal of one's personal identification; the use of rhetorical questions and the inclusion of foreign languages ​​in the denial of basic human rights; the use of bestial metaphors and the choice of vocabulary that directly compares the prisoner of Auschwitz to animals; and the use of extended metaphors and symbolism in the character Null Achtzehn all reveal the concept of dehumanization that has been enacted upon Jews and other minorities. Dehumanization often begins with the removal of personal identification. An important linguistic technique that Levi uses to underline this phase of dehumanization is listing. The use of the list can be seen in the quote: “nothing belongs to us anymore; they took away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair." The use of the list effectively highlights the involuntary elimination of physical possessions that help define oneself or express one's identity t...... middle of paper ...... and have been degraded to a level subhuman level which is often associated with qualities considered inferior to man such as lack of self-control, lack of intelligence and immorality. Prisoners have also been compared to sheep, who try to hide when they find themselves in a vulnerable situation. The sheep is known to be the universal symbol of innocence and goodness, however, as the tone of the passage is tinged with desperation and fear, it reminds readers that sheep often need the protection and supervision of a shepherd and therefore highlights the feeling of vulnerability. The Germans consider prisoners to be of a different species; “This something in front of me belongs to a species that is obviously appropriate to suppress”, they also use the word “fressen” to describe the prisoner's way of eating, which is “the way animals eat”.