Survival In Auschwitz Review

2 Pages 414 Words

Survival in Auschwitz

In 1944, Primo Levi was abducted by the fascist government in Italy and shipped off to Auschwitz, Nazi death camp. Many people do not know that the concentration camps were not only for those of Jewish descent. Unfortunately, political prisoners, criminals, gypsies, and homosexuals were also tossed away. Until reading this book, I had a vague idea of what went on inside of the Nazi concentration camps. Most of my knowledge of the Holocaust stems from textbooks or from firsthand accounts that do not center around camp life. This book gives a vivid account of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
One of the more striking aspects of this work is the attitudes toward each other the “inmates” have. Every man is really for himself, and the newer detainees have to learn the camp rules the hard way. Levi is even left wanting his spoon, bowl, and gloves upon entrance to the Ka-Be, because no one told him that personal effects were forbidden. He speaks of the practice, which everyone learns, of bundling everything one owns in their jacket and keeping it under their head as a pillow so that no one would steal it. I would have thought there would have been more a sense of camaraderie among the inmates. Levi states, however, that when one’s humanity is stripped from them, they live for themselves and themselves only. He finally catches a glimpse of humanity toward the end of the novel, when a young Franco-Pole, Towarowski, offers those who helped carry the stove to their hut a little extra of his bread and suggests that everyone else do the same. Levi is touched by this move, and mused “only a day before a similar event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager said: ‘eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbour’, and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the Lager was dead.” (Levi, 160).
This book affected me a great deal. I have never read a firsthand ...