In this paper I am aiming at analyzing two phenomena. The initial item deals with scrutinizing Primo Levi's (1919-1987) conception of what is constituting a societal human being; i.e., in an Aristotelian sense, a zoon politikon. In this part I am mainly setting out from Levi's, If this is a Man (1947). Levi's assumptions on homo sapiens, based on his Auschwitz experience, are compared to Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) ideas on Menschheit, and on his ideas on the radical evil, as they are being discussed, foremost in his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793).The second item, which also concludes the paper, is posing the issue on how it would be possible to educate on such an experience as the mass killings of 20th century Europe. Survivors from Auschwitz and other concentration camps have lectured for decades in schools in Sweden. When the survivors are not there anymore to tell their stories, what is left? Even if it would be theoretically conceivable to demonstrate the conditions of the Lager, by books or films. Still, how is the task to be performed, to make the mass killings to be something more than an abstract number of victims or an alleged Hollywood movie?

Primo Levi, If This is a Man; Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone; I. Kant, Anthroplogy from a Pragmatic Point of View; Myriam Anissimov’s Primo Levi; Tragedy of an Optimist; Ian Thomson, Primo Levi : A Life; C. Fred Alford, After the Holocaust: The Book of Job, Primo Levi and the Path to Affliction