The Truce on AllMovie

Italian chemist turned author Primo Levi was interred at Auschwitz during WW II until 1945. Following his release, he returned to his native Turin and penned the wrenching autobiographical account of life in the concentration camp If This Is a Man. In 1962, he wrote a companion book, The Truce, a chronicle of his hellish nine-month journey from the camp to Turin. Both books are crucial entries in the history of the Holocaust. This careful adaptation of the second book took filmmaker Francesco Rosi 10 years to make. Levi's trek begins when shortly after the Germans leave, four Russian horsemen ride up and tear down the gates of Auschwitz. Levi is quickly aboard one of the first outbound trucks. Over the next few months, he goes to many different countries, and along the way he meets and is befriended by assorted fellow travelers. Through them, his appreciation of life and freedom slowly returns, but with it also comes a deep rage and an abiding guilt at having survived, a guilt that may have led Levi to suicide in 1987.