Harem of Jewish slave traders to supply eunuchs to harems depended on whether they could acquire castrated males. European artists and writers envisioned and presented the Oriental harem in a romanticized, albeit historically inaccurate manner. The dark eunuch was held as the embodiment of the sensual tyranny that held sway in the fantasized Ottoman palace, for he had been "clipped" or "completely sheared" to make of him the "ultimate slave" for the supreme ruler. In the Ottoman court, white eunuchs, who were mostly brought from castration centers in Christian Europe and Circassia, were responsible for much of the palace administration, while
If This Is a Man not merely its lexical but also its inner faithfulness." Robert S. C. Gordon writes that Levi went on to develop a close relationship with Reidt. The German edition contains a special preface addressed to the German people, which Levi said he wrote out of passionate necessity to remind them what they had done. "If This Is a Man" is often published alongside Levi's second work of witness, "The Truce" (Italian title: "La Tregua"). The book is introduced by a poem. The construction "If .." invites the reader to make a judgment. It alludes to the treatment of people as "Untermenschen"