The very fact that Levi writes without animosity, without any overt appeal to emotions, without an hysterical hatred, is what makes this book(s) so wrenching. He does not try to do what cannot be done - describe Auschwitz painstakingly. He acknowledges in If This Is A Man that the word "cold" cannot describe the cold they felt, the word "hunger" does not begin to portray the hunger that became a living thing, "tiredness", "fear", "grief" - nobody who was not at Auschwitz can ever truly say "I understand, I feel". And I respect Levi for not trying. Just laying the bitter facts down, interwoven with sometimes heartrending, sometimes funny, and always charming characterizations of people, events, incidences, has been a far more powerful, moving and thought-provoking exercise - that is guaranteed to make every reader feel at least one pang of guilt-cum-gratitude for never having known an experience like that, at least one moment where he or she deeply and in the most acute way mourns Auschwitz.