Survival In Auschwitz: If This Is A Man

Survival in Auschwitz: If this is a man

Written by Primo Levi between December 1945 and January 1947. This book opens the trilogy in which the author tells the experience during his captivity in the Nazi extermination field of Auschwitz, during World War II.

Biography

Primo Levi was born on July 31, 1919 in a well -off, cultured and liberal Jewish family. The father was an engineer. He was the eldest of two brothers, of an apococado, but excellent student. He graduated in Chemistry at the University of Turin in 1941. Due to the new Racial Laws Levi has many difficulties in finding employment and works clandestinely in a mine, a moment that coincides with the death of his father. Then Milan goes to work in a Swiss pharmaceutical company that does not affect racial laws.

In 1943 he and some comrades went out to the field and tried to join the Italian anti -fascist resistance. Completely inexperienced for such adventure, he was arrested on December 13, 1943 by the fascist militia, who handed it over to the German army by identifying himself as a Jew (if he had identified as a partisan would have been shot immediately). On February 21, 1944 he was deported and the following month he arrived in Monowice (Monowitz), one of the concentration camps that formed the Auschwitz complex, located in the Poland occupied by the Nazis, where he spent ten months before the fieldwas released by the Russians. Of the 650 Italian deportees with which the writer traveled, only 24 would survive.

Upon his arrival in Auschwitz he was tattooed with number 174517. After nine months of the toughest works, Levi manages to enter as a chemical assistant in the Buna factory (synthetic rubber). Thanks to this, he will work covered during the crudest weeks of Polish winter, which probably saves his life. Shortly before the release of the field, Levi falls ill of scarletina and is admitted to the infectious barracks. The advanced arrival of the Russians and the precipitated flight of the Germans prevent the liquidation of the last. The disease would free Levi from following the fate of most of those who participated in the evacuation, dead of exhaustion and killed in the paths of the roads. After liberation, he returned to Turin, where his mother and sister were waiting for him, who had survived hiding in villages around. Primo Levi begins to work in a paint factory and later set up a small chemical workshop along with a friend. He marries Lucia Morpurg, a friend of adolescence, with whom she has two children. In 1974 (with 55 years) he partially retired from his chemical work to devote more time to writing.

Levi died, apparently for suicide, on April 11, 1987. He rushed through the hole of the stairs of his building, from the third floor in which he lived. It is still unknown if it was really suicide.

Summary by chapters

Trip

The first chapter of the book Primo Levi tells how he was captured by the fascist militia and fear of ending dead, confessed to being an Italian citizen of Jewish race. As a Jew they sent Fossoli concentration to the field where in a few weeks it was more than 600. Soon they were going to leave there. They loaded everyone in the trucks and took them to the station there were only 12 wagons and they were 650. They were transferred by train compressed as goods, for days, cold, thirst, blows, long stops and bad conditions to their new destination, Auschwitz.

When the SS got out of the train, they questioned some, not all, the useful men in a group, the rest never knew. They got on a coach with thirty more and a German soldier asked them politely if they had money or watches to give them.

In the background

The coach stopped and saw a great door and on top of a sign that would remember many times: Arbeit Macht Frei (work makes us free). They were made to enter a room, to wait, tired, standing, where there is a tap that drips but cannot drink (more torture). An SS entered, made them put into rows of five, undress and make a herd with clothes. Then a few people with razors, brushes and quick machinillas entered;At one point they were naked and shaved. They were shower, disinfect and gave them shoes and clothes, but not their own, but like all the others (shoes with wooden sole and tattered striped clothes).

They explain that they are in an arbeitslager, a field of work and all prisoners work in a Buna factory. He learned that it was a Häftling, (Field Reinus), it was called 174517, and while Viva will have it tattooed in the arm. Only if they taught that number they fed them, it was their identification within the lager. They had removed everything they had (clothes, shoes, hair and even the name).

In the lager (workplace) there were about 60 wooden barracks that called blocks. Common housing blocks are divided into two stores;In one (Tagesraum) lives the head of the barracks with his friends and full of comfort;The other place is the bedroom with literas arranged as in a hive, tight to the ceiling, where the Häftlin or prisoners live. There are also barracks destined for nursing, kitchens, Laters brothel … Lager guests are divided three categories, in criminals, politicians and Jews that are distinguished by a triangle sewn in the jacket of different colors. There are ss but few and off the field.

They learned to answer Jawhol (to order), not to ask questions, the value of food, that everything is useful, and that they steal you to minimal carelessness. They knew the regulation of the field and endless prohibitions. They all worked except the sick, during all hours of daylight regardless of the inclement weather and were subdivided into kommandos that are good and bad and that are under the command of a kapo. Levi believes to have reached the background.

The initiation

He was assigned the Block 30 and a bunk where Diena was sleeping, which received her friendly. He began asking him questions, but Diena knew the same as him, so he answered with other questions. I wanted to talk, but they shouted from all the places in Barrachón Rue! (silence!). He resigned to ask questions and sank into a brief dream, bitter and tense.

The next morning, the barrack light. Then they took the opportunity to return to the latrines to smoking or the sink to wash. The sink was an unattractive, poorly illuminated place, and the ground was covered by a layer of mud;The water was not potable and smelled bad, but in this place, washed even with murky water, it is very important as a symptom of a rest of vitality, and necessary as an instrument of moral survival.

The cleaning instinct had disappeared in Levi, but his friend Steinlauf once told him, that precisely because the lager is a great machine to turn men into animals, they did not have to become animals;You could survive and had to want to survive to tell it, to testify. They are slaves, without rights, destined to die, but without losing dignity.

Ka-Be

Null Achtzehn, actually 018 was his co -worker, is young and weak, but he fulfills the orders indifferently. They had to transport a heavy but very short piece, so they were slipped and the edge cuts the back of the left foot to Levi. They went to the barracks and looked at his foot, it didn’t seem that the bone was broken but the shoe that was full of blood mixed with mud. That night immediately after the soup would go to the ka-be, which was a nursing. There they had to heal or die.

Entering Ka-Be with shoes is strictly prohibited and they had to go naked. I arrive his turn and was admitted by the doctor, then the nurse announced that he had no fever and expelled him from there. The next day I had to go to a definitive recognition.

When he was prepared for recognition, the doctor looked at him and felt his swollen and bloody foot, with what shouted in pain. The doctor said: AUFGENOMMEN BLOCK 23 (rest barrack). A few hours later they asked him some questions, and finally he could go to the bedroom;They assigned the bunk number 10.

That night two ss entered, they talked to the chief doctor, and made the selection. The next day two different groups came out. The first shaved and shaved, the second as they were, nobody had fired them.

The ka-be is a lager without material discomforts. There they had all the time for them, it was full of words, memories and another pain, the Heimweh. (Home pain). In the nursing, there is a time, until it recovers. Time to rest, do not work and take a few kilos. But he also realizes that many of those who are there are going to go directly to the crematorium.

Our nochas

After twenty days of Ka-Be, they sent him out. To whom at the exit he did not have special aids, he was assigned another barrack.

He had been assigned Block 45, and suddenly a thought filled him with joy;That was the barracks of his best friend Alberto, 22 years old. He would have wanted to have him as a litera partner, but could not be.

At night, the engineer Kardos was healing the feet of the injured and thus solved the problem of his subsistence. The Copler also takes out its pinch, and the call to those who had broken shoes causing great uproar;Finally the lights go out and have to bed.

Levi did not know who his litera neighbor was. His partner hardly left him room, he has his feet on his face. He sleeps with a light dream, and begins to imagine his family, talking to her, it is a pleasure to be with them but he feels great pain when he woke up and check the reality.

At night they had to lift to eliminate the large dose of water that were forced to take for the day in a cube, and when that cube was full, the last one had to empty it, leave in the middle of the night, with the cold and inShirt and underpants.

Things like to empty the cube, cause them nightmares, which only ended up the shock, or by the voices of the guard saying in the morning that they would rise. Everything to start another day just like everyone, so much cold, so much hunger, so much fatigue. When he put on his shoes, the wounds were reopened and a new day began.

The job

Now Levi sleeps with Resnyk, it’s Polish, tall, but it’s not a bad companion. At work they had to download a huge iron cylinder, which weighed several tons, if they were distracted, could crush them. Then they had to bring some naughty to move the cylinder, and Levi took Resnyk as a partner. When they took the first naughty, he asked permission to go to the latrines and thus delay the work. Then he made a couple more trips with his partner, the morning was already finishing and they were going to eat soon. Once they were all fed they went to sleep and the dreams began again. Until the arrival of 1 is announced, and with it the return to work.

A good day

At that time its purpose was to reach spring, and they didn’t care about anything else. That day, for the first time the sun had come out, the cold ended. They looked at the landscape that the winter days did not let them see, and discovered the dimensions of the field in which they were. It was a good day, if it were not for hunger, but they were lucky since they found a 50 -liter marmita. I would eat more!

 More here of good and evil

It plays the ceremony for the change of underwear that had been waiting for so many days, so they could take small pieces of templates, etc.

The bag is negotiated with everything, they change half a ration of bread or half liter of tobacco or buttons and wire to sew them, they sell their shirt or change it for a newer one, they have to get a spoon to be able to eat the soup in returnof something … always trying that the kapo does not find out because he would hit him.

There were people who rode their little "business". Barter, theft, speculation, trapicheo, black market, corruption, smuggling … Everything is allowed, authorized, even stimulated by the SS in the Buna. It is one more survival mode

The sunk and the saved

Levi tells us the ambiguous life of the lager, and wonders if it really was worth a memory of this, to which he responds affirmatively, since he thought that any human experience did not lack fundamental values, although not always positive.

In the lager there are two categories of prisoners: the saved and the sunk. The sunk, the mass of non-hombres who march and work silently, who have dropped and have neither mood nor forces even to suffer and the saved, those who fight for their existence with intelligence, cunning and a good image.

With the term "Muslim", the veterans of the field designated the weak, the inept, those destined for the selection;They were the men who crumbled, who was not worth addressing them because they would regret and tell you their sorrows. They were the ones who died without leaving a mark on anyone’s memory. They fulfilled the orders, they did not ate more than what was dictated, and they were attached to the discipline of the field. These, exceptionally, lived more than three months, and if they did, they went to the gas chamber.

The veteran Jewish prisoners were few, since they did not survive. The prominent Jews are the product of the structure in the lager: some individuals were offered to a privileged position, demanding in return the betrayal for their companions. They made them insensitive monsters. The prominent non -Jews were common criminals, chosen in German prisons as guards in the fields for the Jews.

To show us some ways of accessing salvation, it tells us the story of some who had fought to survive, the four very different, but they agreed on one thing: they were willing to everything for survival. (Spechschel, he was still able to create accomplices to betray them in his favor. Alfred l for his perfection in the way of being without taking into account the environment in which he was, but possibly still without being happy. Elías Lindzin, a strong, hardworking, active, cheerful boy, etc … perhaps insane, virtues that make him live happier. Henri, great strategist, seducer, locked in his shell and inhumanly ready that he usually wants what he wants.)

Chemistry exam

The constitution of the chemical kommando was officially announced, a group of fifteen häftling met with the kapo that was going to direct them but was not even chemical.

The next few days there would be a chemistry exam. He knew it would be saved if he became a specialist, and he would only get it overcoming the exam. Of the fifteen initials there were only twelve and five were not chemical. Finally, he takes the exam, not knowing if he will remember something and dead of fear, it goes well, but it better not get illusions.

Ulysses song

Jean, El Pikolo (the literate click), was the youngest chemist Kommando’s Häftling (field inmate). He was a privileged one, but he did not forget about human relationships with less privileged companions and had gained the confidence of the kapo. Primo’s friend who invited him to accompany him to look for the kitchen marmita, which was a pleasant round trip while talking and cousin recites the verses he remembers from the divine comedy (the story of the divine comedy could be related to the story with the storyof Levi, since it is a tragic episode but with a happy ending due to freedom).

Summer events

Enemies bombings begin in order to stop the field work. The field suffers a crisis, where work is irregular. There were shelters where prisoners could rest and talk about Lorenzo, his old friend who receives Oh

In the month of August 1944, they had been in the concentration camp for five months, they were already veterans. The bombings of high Silesia began, the work of the Buna stopped sharply. Slaves had to quickly build shelters to which they were prohibited from access and the Buna had begun to fall apart around them. They were prohibited from accessing armored shelters by witnessing these events, politicians, green triangles and the SS saw in our faces the sad joy of revenge, therefore their ferocity increased.

Levi met Lorenzo, an Italian worker who took him bread and the leftovers of his food for six months, gave him a shirt and wrote for him a letter to Italy without asking anything for it. Levi believes that he owes Lorenzo to be alive today, not for his material help if no more for moral help, to remind him that there was still a fair world outside there, not corrupted and wild, oblivious to hatred, for which it was worth itsave yourself. Thanks to Lorenzo he did not forget that he was a man. Lorenzo symbolizes, for Levi, freedom and life.

October 1944

Winter comes again and that knows what it means: suffer and die, seven out of ten will die. In addition the lager is saturated and also know what it means: selection (Selekcja), the word that is heard in many conversations.

It was a work Sunday, and mysteriously everyone knew that this day was the selection. That same morning there had been a selection in the nursing and the fireplace had been smoking ten days. It seemed that everything was marching every day, but then the bell was heard and they understood that everything was serious. They were locked in the barraca, they gave them a file with their documents and made them undress, then wait for the commission to arrive, they pushed them towards the Tagesraum that is the command, a quarter of seven meters by four where they are compressed. At the door an SS is put, the arbitrator of their destination, where they pass fast, deliver the file and the SS decides their destiny, their luck;, to the right, the life, to the left, the death. Levi saw that his card was on the right. The selection was over, so they were in closure. It was also distributed the stew, and those selected were given a double ration, which nobody knew well why.

Kraus

It has been raining for ten days and the earth was completely flooded, they worked soaked, but it can always be worse since the wind was not blowing.

They worked nailed to the mud, in chain. Kraus is Hungarian, works too quickly, as if they were going to feed more and their work rhythm conditioned that of others.

On the back Levi spoke with Kraus, he told him that he had dreamed of him, that he was at home and feed him, drink and sleeping bed although he did not understand him and answered him with words that Levi only understood his name.

Die Drei Leute Vom Lavor

They were 97 when they entered, and only 29 survived until October, and those, 8 went to the selection. Winter had barely started and there were only 21 left. Keep working at the Chemical Komando but with few advantages over others

They arrived at the most prisoner lager and exceeded the number of fifty thousand. There were only 18 in the Komando, when the kapo said that three haftlinge had been chosen for the laboratory, and among them was Levi. Here you will enjoy more privileges such as shirt and new underpants, the temperature is wonderful with what the winter problem is solved, and the hunger problem is not difficult to solve. The work is sitting with a notebook and pencil, nobody hits him, he has soap, they can steal and sell without much risk to get other things. A hope of surviving.

With the women of the laboratory, the three felt ashamed, they could not look at them as women since they did not seem men, and they despised them.

The last

Since Levi is in the laboratory he does not work with his friend Alberto but they continue to see and spend.

One day, they make them attend to see how they hang a prisoner responsible for the destruction of one of the crematoriums, something that impacted them. Everyone heard the dying shout, as if beat them: ―Kamaraden, Ich bin der Letze! (Companions, I am the last!)

Ten -day history

Levi sick of scarletina and has to enter the ka-be where he is in a room along with other twelve patients.

There he learns that the field will evacu. His friend Alberto went to say goodbye to him and all the health.

In the Ka-Be there were some eight hundred, in Levi’s room they were eleven, and thus they began for ten days outside the world and time. In those days they have to get a stove to not die of cold, blankets, food, survive bombings and their own disease. They shared the food, they distributed the tasks, they took care of each other, they organized, they could talk about everything … in short they were men again. Here he met Charles and Arthur, thanks to his help they managed to survive, they must therefore mutual gratitude.

In the field the Germans had disappeared, everything was deserted, destroyed, dirty, a sick prisoner wandering, corpses, crows, … finally on January 27 the Russians arrived in the field, after ten days only one of the eleven had died.

Moral essay and reflections

Primo Levi wrote “If this is a man“ a few months after the return of Auschwitz, hot, to transmit everything he had lived there, narrating him in the first person, made lived in his own flesh and trying to understand ascan torture and free genocide.

Try to write as as neutral as possible, tell the facts without judging them, simply describes them. It is a survival story and Levi gives thanks for being able to tell it.

In Auschwitz a conglomerate of concentration camps was lifted, and there was deported Levi, after being captured in Italy in the winter of 1944 and where he remained until the spring of 1945 in which he was released;Eleven months that the author spent in the Lager of Monowitz-Auschwitz, a work field that provided slaves for the chemical industry that the Germans tried to build on the outskirts of the town. There, in this place, thousands of people died in the hands of the Nazis, mostly Jews.

In the concentration camp everything is prohibited, not for any hidden reason, but because the field has been created for that purpose. If you want to continue living they have to learn it quickly.

The living conditions for prisoners were terrifying. After being transferred in train cars in bad conditions, caged as animals, who manages to pass the first selection by the SS were taken to a barracks, where they were devoid of all their belongings, their clothes, peeled, shaved andtattooed. They end in a few minutes with the dignity of a man, with his identity, cease to be people and become a number. Then, the kapo (trusted prisoner with authority over the other prisoners) or head of the barracks, assigned a free hole in a bunk that was sometimes shared with other skeletal prisoners;these

They came from several countries in Europe, spoke different languages, and they did not understand each other. In addition the orders to the prisoners are given in Polish, that many did not understand and ended up hitting them.

The rest of their travel companions disappear in an instant, without leaving a mark, their parents, children, family … and could not say goodbye to them. From the first moment Levi understands that the moral values that exist outside the field disappear and the only value is survival.

In the lager everything is prohibited because for this it has been created, a world of misery, horror, injustice, humiliation, evil, a Russian roulette in which anyone can die. His body stops belonging to him, they stop feeling emotions, they become animals and violence is the only language.

They should fight hunger, since food rations were minimal, extreme cold in winter was one more threat, diseases, shortcomings and work in hungry and sick men a great enemy.

They were punished and hit with brutality but they did not reveal or resist, he had no choice but to succumb and fulfill orders because the slightest gesture of rebellion could mean death. They were not cowards, it was simply to accept the system, so you could last more.

The duration of its stay in the Lager was tragically brief, the population continually decreased by death and was renewed by the arrival of new prisoners. The newcomers did not know what they had prepared: they were received with coldness and indifference, some were invited to undress "for the shower", sometimes they were given a towel and soap, and they were promised a coffee after the bathroom, when in reality they went to the gas cameras that were camouflaged like shower rooms and never knew about them. Others, those who could be exploited as workers, were destined to the fields where all rights as human being lost, became slaves.

Lager’s law says that if you can steal the bread to the neighbor, you steal it, theft, object traffic, the trapicheo … the daily rations were currency;He has no choice but to learn and adapt, because the most important thing is to get alive tomorrow. If for any reason they did not adapt to the brutal regime of life in the concentration camp their time in that place will be very short.

Despite all the atrocities, Levi describes some "good day", because the sun has come out or because he gets a more food ration and has some moment of happiness, even if it is fleeting.

What becomes a man who has been taken from absolutely everything, who has touched back on the human condition? He had managed to survive thanks to his willingness to continue seeing men as men, not as things. The simple fact of giving bitumers to his shoes or washing his face, even with dirty water, supposed an act of dignity and hygiene that allowed him to continue clinging to life, not sinking and starting to die, because although they had taken everything away, what nobody could access was his freedom of thought.

Inhuman orders executors were any people. Those monsters were common men, willing to believe and obey without discussing, that is the really terrible and incomprehensible, that some current types were the executioners. Within the field, the executioners were often the same prisoners, who, due to one more bread or for a little more soup they acted as executors and hitmen of the Nazis. On the upper scale, those who gave the orders, could be parents who at the end of their work returned to their homes with their women and their children and continued their lives as if nothing was happening.

Not all prisoners were the same, there were classes among the prisoners, who could be defined by prisoners (Poles, Germans, Italians …), or by the number they carried tattooed (the high numbers were more novice prisoners, the low old prisoners). Not everyone was Jews. According to their condition, a red and yellow star, political prisoners and criminals a green) are sewn in their clothing).

Throughout this labyrinth, the SS appear, they are well above and they barelittle more.

Next to this ruthless world, Levi found some case of solidarity such as Lorenzo, an Italian civil worker, a mason of profession who was taking bread for six months and the leftovers of his food every day every day. He also gave him his shirt and sent a letter to his family without asking anything in return. Thanks to him, he recalled that there are still good and solidarity people out there and helped him not forget that he was a man himself

Jean Samuel also, who was a peaceful and friendly Pikolo and did not forget to maintain human relationships with less privileged companions. He even talks about a good friend, Alberto, with whom he shares many talks and even the last gram of food.

From other colleagues who keep a good memory are Arthur and Charles with whom he shared his last ten days in the infirmary and thanks to his common work they managed to survive, they were men again.

Reflections

After reading all the terror and evil that took place in the Nazi holocaust, I think that if those who had the most luck are the ones who died the first day in the gas cameras, but I also understand those who sank and quickly fell into thebackground and those who fought every day for their only objective that was to survive even if it was in inhuman conditions.

How can there be men who commit such atrocities and who also do not feel guilty because they were simply doing their job and fulfilling orders? Are people who act as executors, who take care to take their peers to death, and those who decide whether they live or die?

Everything was unfair, they were mistreated, they were hungry. Can you forgive all this? Do you deserve someone to hate him?

The Nazi holocaust has occurred, there are many testimonies that confirm it, it ended long ago, the bad thing is that there are still many wars that occur around us and although they are not of such magnitude they continue to die innocent.

Levi died, apparently for suicide, on April 11, 1987 without leaving any farewell note. He always struggled to stay optimistic, but there is doubt if this fact is a consequence of horrors and wounds still without closing his stay in Auschwitz.