Category: Survival in Auschwitz

The Nazi’s rule is taken into account to be the foremost oppressive and discriminative rule in present time. During this rule, which lasted until the period of the Second war, the Nazi engaged in widespread discrimination against European Jews. One of the Most known cam was Auschwitz concentration camp, where millions of Jewish prisoners were killed. Before being killed, the prisoners were taken through a process of dehumanization by the Nazi guards.The theme brutally informs us about the systematic nature with which the Germans allotted the action of murder of Jews and other people anyone who opposed their political ideology. Throughout his memoir, Levi and the other prisoners of Auschwitz are dehumanized in a number of ways. Two such traumatic examples of dehumanization are being forced to stay naked in cold and being treated like animals. However, amidst the darkness of the camp, Levi also shows us how he and the others try to hang on to their humanity by covering their naked body in cold and supporting each other psychologically under the brutal circumstances.

The first major action within the dehumanization process was the order for the inmates to undress and provides away their clothes that were then replaced by ill-fitting rags and w boots with wooden soles. According to Levi, all the prisoners including him were naked, and their personal belongings were discarded and their hair were shaved off. By being clothed in filthy rags and mismatched shoes, the inmates were set aside from humanity and there was feeling of humiliation among the author and other prisoners. Levi notes that through being made to put on the unrecognizable rags, the previously dignified persons were transformed into a mass of depressing puppets (24) .“Death begins with the shoes”(Levi 26) Also in the camp, Jewish prisoners are only allowed wooden shoes, which are painful and cause dangerous sores that may result in lethal infections. In the narration, there was a moment where prisoners were made to wait for long hours without clothes in cold water.This reflects both the prisoners’ low station and also the general disregard with which the Germans treat them.

According to the Author He had been placed in a place where no man is viewed as human any longer and where inside this spot, if a man needs to endure whether intellectually or truly, it is dependent upon that man to oppose the dehumanizing treatment by the Nazi’s. Levi holds on to this humanity in camp by noticing his surroundings and getting support from his companions. There are people who reconnect Levi to his humanity, Lorenzo and Alberto were two individuals who had seeks after Levi and whom Levi trusted all through his hard times in journey in the camp. Both Alberto and Levi were in the Lager together to help and help each other through any snags that they looked inside the camps. Alberto is the one individual that Levi trust and the one in particular who knows Levi by and by. Alberto helps Levi in a manner by which he directs Levi through the detainment rules and guidelines. Alberto realizes that he should do as he is advised in order to be survived.

The Nazi had the option to distance the Jewish individuals from the remainder of the human network or community. Levi and other prisoners were living in horrible conditions in the camp and were treated like animals. The prisoners were housed under sub-human living conditions where even the minimum amount of cleanliness was difficult to keep up. The living quarters of the prisoners was little cabins that are stuffed and the prisoners are required to sleep on uncomfortable bunks made of planks of food covered by straw and due to overcrowding, at two individuals occupy almost all the bunks (Levi 29). The author couldn’t stay in bed loosened up conditions due to crowded area in the living quarters. The process reduced the aspirations of the prisoners and for most of them, their only desire was to survive. Levi declares, “We are slaves, deprived of every right” (23). They did not expect any justice and were satisfied with being alive. The author was experiencing physical pain on the back as they attempted to rest on the hard bunks in wound stable positions. Levi sees himself as fortunate when he finds a vacant bunk during his first day. He extends himself cheerfully and is pleased at having a hard square of wood to rest on (Levi 29). This outlines how the dehumanization procedure diminished the yearnings of the detainees since a free individual would not have gotten a kick out of resting on a hard board of wood. The author was frustrated and jealous, because of his own lack of hope, shown through his observations and descriptions of others. According to Levi, the discomfort of living in the crowded space was worst as the inmates are surrounded by filth and. Most of them had to rest alongside their neighbors who had feet absorbed human waste. The scary condition of the camp had affected the author physically, emotionally and psychologically.

Alberto has been there for Levi all through Levi’s whole journey inside the work and despite the fact that Alberto ends up dying, he had the option to help Levi from biting the dust intellectually and genuinely. He gave Levi expectation, support, and a decent perspective on the most proficient method to survive. His behavior and thinking emerged as a urging way to guide Levi and to teach him the best way to keep his humanity or humankind.Also Lorenzo not only saved the author physically by giving him food, but he more so saves him mentally and helps him to remain humane. In addition, according to the Levi, Lorenzo asks for nothing in return because he was a good man who “did not think that one did good for a reward” (119). Throughout the memoir, where there is a lack of hope, comes a lack of humanity. For example, when Levi and his friend Alberto felt in an utterly hopeless and broken position, they no longer even understood what it would be like to have the strength to fight for humanity. (150). Both two of them are considered as genuine men who won’t deny themselves or others of their humanity. They oppose all endeavors of dehumanization whether it is them or by another person.

The Author has highlighted some of the horrible experiences that he experienced in the process of dehumanization in the camp. In addition, he also draws our attention towards the activities of the Nazi were somewhere successful in lessening the detainees to sub-human level. It was due to the brutal treatment that prisoners were made to disregard the idea of essential human rights. Levi’s understanding of the Holocaust suggests a more intense importance behind its occasions or actions. The author’s ends up serving the cause of humanity after experiencing the brutal treatment and dehumanization of the army

Work Cited

1. Levi, Primo. Survival in the Auschwitz, The Orion Press,1959.

The day begins at 7 a.m on school days and 8 a.m and a regular day. I wake up to the first alarm that goes off. Then I lie in bed until the second alarm goes off and I get up and get ready to go to school or go outside. I wait for the bus to come, then when it comes I walk outside and get on the bus and the school day begins. When I get home I go feed all the animals on the farm and then go do homework. If it was a regular day I would eat breakfast then go outside and start doing things on the farm. Primo Leviś day starts like mine but earlier and he does different things when he gets up. Primo Leviś life before the war.

Primo Levi was born on July 31, 1919 in his hometown Turin Italy. ( ) His father was not in the war like Primo. Primo’s father’s name is Caesar Levi and his mother’s name is Ester Luzzati. Primo also has a younger sister named Anna Maria Levi. She was three years younger than Primo. He went to school at the University of Turin and Liceo Classico Massimo d’Azeglio. His jobs were writing poems, he was a chemist, and he also was a journalist. Primo Levi’s life during the war was very different than his earlier life.

Primo Levi was Italian Jewish chemist partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. Primo also was the author of many books, novels, collections of short stories, essays, and poems. Along with the other prisoners he was put to work at brutally hard labor not anything he’d ever known as a highly educated chemist. The book Survival In Auschwitz is widely considered one of the top books of all. It was written by Primo Levi. The prisoners’ work day began at 4:30 in the summer and at 5:30 in the winter. The prisoners got up at the sound of a gong. They carefully tidied their living quarters. Then, the prisoners attempted to wash themselves and go to the bathroom before drinking their coffee or tea. Then, the second gong rang and they ran outside to the roll-call square where they lined up in rows of ten by block. The prisoners were counted during roll call. If the numbers did not add up, roll call was made bigger. Finally, the order came to form up by labor details. The prisoners walked out to working groups. With musical accompaniment in the form of marches played by the camp orchestra. Primo Levi’s life after the war became better.

He survived Auschwitz during World War II against all odds, but he died a year after the war was over. He died on April 11, 1987 in Turin, Italy by falling at the age of 67 year old. He got married in september of 1947. Before dying, he had a wife named Lucia Morpurgo. He was only married 40 years before his death. In addition, he had two children with Lucia Morpurgo. The two children’s names are Renzo Levi was a boy and Lisa Levi was a girl. His life compared to my life.

His day starts similar to mine but a little earlier and he does different things when he gets up. The life of Primo Levi’s life before the war is similar to my life. His life during the war is not similar to my life because he is in the war and I am not in the war. His life after the war was also not similar to my life because he died a year after World War II. His early life is similar to my life but the rest of his life is not similar to mine.

The holocaust Levi’s involvement with Auschwitz was self-contradicting. The Holocaust was an uncommon slaughter by Nazi Germany, with the objective of disposing of all Jewish people1. He did in the end become one of the most powerful observers of the Holocaust and these concentration camps, yet not without encountering it direct. He graduated in 1941 from the University of Turin and got the most elevated distinctions in science. So it is suggested that Levi is an astute individual, through books as well as through feeling. Passionate knowledge portrays the capacity to know and in charge of one’s feelings regardless of the circumstance. As Levi was caught and expelled to Auschwitz, he didn’t lose levelheadedness. He remained calm and watched everything that was happening around him. Tragically, the occasions happening around him comprised of detainees getting mishandled physically, stripped, energetically worked, and so forth. Levi was searching for some light in the circumstance, however then started to see the detainees betraying each other. Detainees were in charge of different detainees and implemented their will on any detainee they satisfied. The principle reason these detainees were foes was because of endurance. There was such an alarm measure of nourishment that it was an ‘eat or be eaten’ kind of circumstance, no play on words expected. Inevitably, following a few months a large portion of the Jewish detainees wound up biting the dust.

Levi portrays the “gray zone” as a region where a particular individual doesn’t move their ethical position. As it were, this zone includes joint effort with oppressors to shifting degrees for special treatment2.It is a generally uncommon breed, and he characterizes himself as such. He receives the thoughts of bargain and salvation which show his eagerness to unite individuals regardless of the circumstance and to limit the damage all the while. Plainly, this way of thinking straightforwardly restricts what is occurring in the Auschwitz camps. Be that as it may, he had the option to uphold and spread his belief systems. He began by submitting an awful deed of taking however it was for his own endurance. It is consistent as to carry bargain and salvation to the camp, he should be alive. Moreover, a couple increasingly person’s moved toward Levi and promised to not submit any of these antagonistic demonstrations. Unexpectedly, he credited karma to his endurance too, since numerous Jewish detainees got freed by the Russians and got shot, however Levi figured out how to endure. By and large, the idea of “gray zone” is fundamental to Levi’s deduction as he never goes amiss from his ethics. He couldn’t care less that his perspective contrasts from the Nazi’s, he will take the necessary steps to advocate for himself and carry change to his condition.

I believe that a vividly historical memory ought to avoid any possible genocide in the future, contingent upon the point of view of the individual this inquiry it coordinated towards. Individuals like Levi are uncommon, as he took a chance with his life just to improve the lives of others around him. The recollections of what he saw right when coming into camp incited this reaction out of him. He was acquainted with the circumstance, at that point investigated, and formulated an answer. This arrangement agrees with the announcement of a striking recorded memory forestall decimation. Since Levi saw firsthand the grisly assaults that were coordinated towards people, he brought matters into his own hands. Everything considered, counteracting barbarity violations ought to be a need for everyone3, yet there are people like Russians and Nazis translate the circumstance totally in an unexpected way. They see the Jews as a waste to put it straight to the point, and they don’t discover any utilization for them. In this way, the age of these frightful recollections by the Russians and Nazis through maltreatment of Jews is sheer control of their will. So according to these people, there is no legitimate motivation to avert future slaughter. With everything taken into account, the point of view of most people are like Levi just with regards to compassion of physical mischief towards people. In this way, the inquiry with respect to recollections counteract future decimation is extremely substantial. Notwithstanding, if the recollections are through the point of view of Russians and Nazis, there would be no compelling reason to counteract future decimation as they are achieving precisely what they need, disposal of Jews. The lessons of the Holocaust were to be instructed and associated with people in the future so as to help forestall genocide for the future.

Source:

1. Deutsche Welle. “Primo Levi: Remembering the Holocaust Writer Born 100 Years Ago: DW: 31.07.2019.” DW.COM, www.dw.com/en/primo-levi-remembering-the-holocaust-writer-born-100-years-ago/a-49813706.
2. Baird, Marie L. “‘The Gray Zone’ as a Complex of Tensions: Primo Levi on Holocaust Survival.” SpringerLink, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 1 Jan. 1970, link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781403981592_18.
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention.

When people are thrown into the harshest environment in which they are faced with hopelessness and certainty of death, their most distinguishing trait is revealed: determination to keep going. One’s power of perseverance is essential since it indicates whether the result will be positive or negative. These harsh environments are created by force which is the motive of why and how we do the things we do. Simone Weil defines force “as that x that turns anybody who is subject to it into a thing” (Weil, p. 3). This is clear when force kills and makes the person a corpse or thing. However, when a person is forced to live life as if a thing, this definition becomes less clear. Of this, she says: “The idea of person’s being a thing is a logical contradiction. Yet what is impossible in logic becomes true in life, and the contradiction within the soul tears it to shreds” (Weil, p. 8). She conveys the dehumanizing aspect and threat of force through the context of war. Weil’s definition of force does not only strip one’s humanity, but it takes away all natural abilities, specifically the ability to respond to war. The power of force does not fail to prove that we not only have a soul, but actually are a soul which is illustrated in the agonizing way described by Simone Weil (Weil, p. 7).

Once someone is under the control of force, they are living life as if they were a thing, but as a thing that suffers from this condition as a suffering, conscious being. This is the central idea when understanding the tragedies in the texts Trojan Women by Euripides, War and the Iliad by Simone Weil, and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. It is evident that in these texts people under the control of force experience a loss of humanity while trying to find ways of life that can be sustained.

In the play Trojan Women, when Troy is destroyed, the women are forced into slavery. The play portrays one’s competence to survive when faced with hardships and a part of that survival is hope which is shown by the protagonist, Hecuba. She uses hope as a mechanism for her grief as all she can do is lament the loss of her husband, children, and city: “What can I to help you from this harsh fate? I can beat my head and breast, that much I can do. I have that much power. O child, O city – what’s left to suffer? How much further can we fall into complete destruction?” (Euripides, p. 58). When Hecuba says “Whose slave shall I be…stooped, mechanical, a less-than-Feeble token of the dead?” (Euripides, p. 37), she shows that the misery has obscured her humanity, living life in the painful way described by Simone Weil. However, Hecuba shows that there is always anticipation for a better future, even when force takes away everything on which she pins her hope. This is initially shown when Hecuba says “You must bear it…sail with the hard current of the strait, sail with destiny, don’t steer your life’s prow back into the heaving winds” (Euripides, p. 35). By comparing her misery to the heavy winds, she portrays her bravery and endurance against everything she has lost. Additionally, when her daughter is forced into serving Agamemnon, Hecuba still believes that her daughter will prevail against this devastating incident. She tries to strengthen her so that she can endure the slavery as says “My child, my child, hurl down your holy laurel branches/And strip your body of the sacred wreaths you wear” (Euripides, p. 40). Although her daughter, along with the other Trojan Women have lost hope, it does not restrain Hecuba from looking for ways of life that can be sustained. For example, when Andromache announces that Hecuba’s daughter, Polyxena is dead, Andromache explains how the dead are happier because they are no longer suffering: “To me there is no difference between death/And never being born again, and death is better/By far than living in a life flooded with pain” (Euripides, p. 53). In contrast, Hecuba says that “life means hope, death is nothing at all” (Euripides, p. 53). Despite the death of her daughter adding onto her suffering, she holds onto her values which she uses to empower herself, as well as the other women. Hecuba’s desperation for hope becomes more evident when she urges Andromache to make the best of her subjugation. She suggests that she should keep her son alive, as well bear more children in her captivity so they can help rebuild Troy when she says “Bow down to your new master…this way you’ll help us all…you’ll see my grandsons safely into manhood…bring the city back to life” (Euripides, p. 55). In the end of the play, Hecuba’s condition as a slave becomes ever clearer, but she still rises and shows the desire to continue one last time as she says “time to go, you trembling unsteady limbs, go forward now into the day of slavery” (Euripides, p. 78).

Moreover, Bespaloff in the text War and The Iliad, portrays Hector as a “Homeric” man whose happiness exists in his family and country. His loyalty to his country is shown when he argues against his wife as she desperately pleas him to stay and resist the force. Unlike Hector, Achilles values glory and vengeance. Bespaloff paints a cowardly and uncivilized image of Achilles as she argues “without him, [men] would sleep on frozen, boredom, till the planet itself grew cold” (Bespaloff, p. 42). For Weil, Hector suffers from the almost loss of his humanity which he wants to persevere faced with the force of Achilles. In the context of war, Hector is forced to overlook the pain which is created by taking another person’s life. As all emotion disappears, Hector deteriorate his humanity. This is evident when Hector kills Patroclus and threatens that he will drag his body back to Troy, and feed it to ravenous dogs. As he fails to treat Patroclus’ body with respect, he loses a sense of balance of equity, thus, he too turns himself into a thing. In the end, Hector gathers courage to fight Achilles which ultimately leads to his own death. This force turns him into a literal corpse, dearer now to ferocious dogs than to his wife. When Hector puts on Achilles’ armor, he becomes as cowardly as Achilles. In the act of survival, he begins to abuse his power and refuses to back down when necessary, ultimately no longer portraying characteristics of an “Homeric” man. During their final duel, Hector is isolated from his community physically and symbolically. Before he is turned into a corpse, Hector begs for a proper burial, however, he dies without the assurance that he will get one as Achilles responds “There are no covenants between men and lions…it is not permitted that you and I should love each other” (Bespaloff, p. 36). In contrast, to Bespaloff’s mind, it is worth it to Hector because he knows that death means giving up all power to protect his family and country from humiliation and punishment: “it coincides with the true meaning of life” and “worth defending even with life itself, to which it has given a measure, a form, a price” (Bespaloff, p. 27). She believes that Hector’s defeat is caused by his “capacity for happiness” and Achilles, the force, lacks this capacity for happiness which drives him “on toward his prey and fills his heart with an infinite power for battle (Bespaloff, p. 32).

Throughout his struggle in Auschwitz, Primo Levi tries to organize himself to survive the state of enslavement longer. Upon Levi’s arrival, he begins to question his life as he endures many obstacles. Like the other prisoners who had been so dehumanized that they had no remaining hope for survival, Levi had no faith in the world he once knew before Auschwitz. Throughout his memoir, Levi shows how the misery of their oppression portrays the dehumanization of the prisoners. This is initially evident when Levi says “we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this” (Levi, p. 21). When it is time for the prisoners to fill their bowls with soup, Levi compares them to animals by stating “we have an animal hurry to swell our bellies” (Levi, p. 69) This suggests the prisoner’s animalistic behavior since their mental and physical state is being deteriorated by the Germans. Another example portraying the prisoner’s loss of humanity is after a fight happens in the camp and Levi describes Elias’ punch as “powerful and accurate as a catapult” as this infers that Elias is “cold and rigid” due to their subjugation (Levi, p. 96). He shows how majority of men give up hope in struggle for survival, even himself when entering the camp. When Levi tries to adapt to what is being done in the camp, he completely loses any remaining hope he has for survival. This is proven when he has no desire to clean himself since he is so demoralized by the work. He argues “Why should I wash?… Would I live a day, another hour longer…We will all die, we are all about to die (Levi, p. 40). However, as time passes in the camp, Levi begins to adapt and regains his faith in order to survive. In doing so, Levi finds that there are two different responses from living in the camps: those that are “saved” and those that are “drowned” (Levi, p. 87). Levi uses this perspective to motivate him to resist the enslavement and avoid becoming a part of the drowned. Through the comparison of a “mussleman” and successful prisoner, he recognizes that the ability to adapt and develop skills are vital in order to survive, not one’s physical endurance. Of this he says, “Man’s capacity to build around himself a tenuous barrier…is based on an invaluable activity of adaption, partly passive and unconscious, partly active” (Levi, p. 56). As a result, he begins to learn the unstated and stated rules of the camp, and acquaints himself with the other prisoners. They share their food, stories, and most importantly, their struggle which ultimately helps Levi regain a sense of his humanity. By conforming to the ways of force, Levi shows his means for survival. An example of this is when he earns a place in the laboratory which gives him the opportunity to an easier life: “I can save myself if I become a Specialist, and that I will become a Specialist if I pass a chemistry examination” (Levi, p. 103). He takes advantage of this situation by stealing soup and other items that improve his life. It is apparent that even in the end, during the final ten days of struggle, Levi attempts to rehabilitate the morals and values that the camp took away from them. He says “For pure propaganda purposes I gave everyone nasal drops of camphorated oil. I assured Sertelet that they would help; I even tried to convince myself”, using the drops as a symbol hope to improve the mental state of the prisoners (Levi, p. 168).

Through these texts, it is evident that people under the sway of force experience a loss of humanity while trying to find ways of life that can be sustained. For example, Hecuba constantly searches for a sign of hope as her condition as a slave becomes clearer in the course of the play, Hector suffers from the almost loss of his humanity which he wants to persevere faced with the force of Achilles, and Primo Levi tries to organize himself to survive the condition of slavery longer. Although these characters make attempts in resistance to force, ultimately force triumphs. When Troy is burning in flames, Hecuba recognizes that “[her] sacrifices counted for nothing” since she is ultimately subjected to the force: slavery (Euripides, p. 74). After accepting her defeat, she runs into the fire, but is stopped by Odysseus’s men. In War and The Iliad, Hector meets Achilles in the final battle where he finally conquers himself, turning into a literal corpse. In end of Levi’s memoir, he shows signs of the “drowned” when he says “The Russians can come now: there are no longer any strong men among us… they will not only find us, the salves, the worn-out, worthy of the unarmed death which awaits us” (Levi, p. 177). Levi feels that him and the other prisoners have died inwardly and morally, and although the camp was designed to force the prisoners into living life as a thing, in the very act of trying to survive, they too turned themselves into a thing: “even if we know how to adapt ourselves, even if we have finally learnt how to find our food and to resist the fatigue…now we are oppressed by shame” (Levi, p. 178). All in all, it is difficult for people to find ways of life that can be sustained when force takes away everything, including their humanity, ultimately, leaving them as a breathing corpse.

I was taught the structure of an “if…then” hypothesis in my high school chemistry class. Then, I used the “IF() { then }” function in JavaScript to code an app. The repeated appearance of this phrase in this format furthered my expectation that the introduction of the “if” suggested a “then” would be found soon after. The title, If this is a man, threw this heuristics for a loop before I turned the first page. Upon knowing of this original Italian title, I failed to see the phrase as a complete statement, but rather an open-ended part of a question, the second half of which is presented for the reader to fill in. Primo Levi’s account of Auschwitz provides more than its fair share of situations deserving of being questioned. Therefore, I felt obligated to draw up some questions of my own – of the importance of responsibility, the nature of morality, and the characteristics of humanity – and discover how important these were to the question of life that the prisoners of Auschwitz faced.

If this is a man, then what is the value of the individual? Individualism is a great assertion to hold when things are going well, but for a theory to work, it must do so in the worst case scenario. Levi paints the picture of just how bad it can get, as he observes his “fortune” to “belong to the category of economically useful Jews” (Levi, 46), and therefore were not killed. This reminds me of the communist assertion that the “bourgeoisie…has resolved personal worth into exchange value” (Marx & Engels, Ch.1). Regardless of Nazism’s anti-communistic sentiments, things have fallen into place with the Nazi’s as the oppressor class and the Jews as the oppressed. Is this dynamic inevitable, as the communists suggest? Or is this the result of something less obvious? When taken to the camps, Levi observed that “a few [prisoners] had given themselves up spontaneously…’to be in conformity with the law’”(Levi, 14). Here, he identifies the mistake in the individual’s priorities, putting themselves in danger to obey the law. An interesting counter-perspective against the communists arises – that perhaps the compound individual actions across a nation hold responsibility for the devolution of a system. However, this “personal responsibility” argument is pathological when used to blame individuals for not shouldering the burden of the bad behavior of institutions. The counter to that is to acknowledge the ethical responsibility of the individual that indeed does extends to their community, and to pursue the development of the ethical sovereign citizen that avoids behaviors that would corrupt the operation of the system of the systemic level in the long-term. Still, it seems incredibly harsh to place any responsibility for the horrors of that time on the individual. Why then would a system become so wrong at every level of analysis simultaneously, with hundreds of thousands of gestapo informants in countless families, slave labor, and a state run on murder, destruction, and genocide? It wasn’t the overwhelming ability of a single person to take control of history, but the failure of individuals to live straight, ethical lives and to stand up for the truth. Tendency to obey authority is another theory, and yes, you can set circumstances up so that people are likely to be obedient to orders that are pathological. However, I don’t believe that a population of overwhelmingly good people tend towards listening to a tiny minority of bad people – and the Nazi ethos was prevalent from the familial level to the leader.

A sustainable system must reward the individual with the fruits of their own labor, less it risks its society degenerating into self-preservation. The ability to self-sacrifice and give to others is only possible when incentives drive effort. Levi encounters Kraus, who “works too much…has not yet learnt our underground art of economizing on everything” (Levi, 132). Kraus still acts as if he is on the outside, where he will be rewarded for working harder. Instead, his work sets the pace for everyone he’s chained to and puts them all at risk, while thinking he was doing the right thing. The system of Auschwitz is one that takes “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, as Marx would say. To lose the benefit of their own effort is crippling to the value of an individual, and being unable to do anything beyond the minimum one needs to do for themselves leads to a devolution of morality. By taking away the things people can do to separate themselves from others, the Nazi’s had confirmed that the individual was an essential part of what “makes a man”. If it was so easy to take people’s ability to be self-sacrificing through this reduction, though, then it begs the question of how inherent morality is when pit against the human hierarchy of needs.

If this is a man, then how unprepared are humanity’s social constructs to face the extremes of reality? We like to think ourselves moral beings by nature, yet the question of inherent morality is thrust upon us when evolutionary instinct to survive seems to override morality – or at least in the context of inherent morality. Perhaps constructs like morality are privileges of free people. This certainly rang true with philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who argued that humans were inherently selfish creatures at the core, which supports the idea of morality only existing through conscious effort. The moment in the story when Levi finally acquires a stove, the prisoners repair the window, and heat begins to spread is revealing. The Franco-Pole, Towarosky, “proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to us three who had been working” (Levi, 159-160). This small moment is a blinding spotlight of what I called “conscious morality” re emerging within the prisoners that could finally afford to be self-sacrificing – mirroring the primitive beginnings of a wage system where those who worked harder received greater rewards. The prisoners, instead of focusing on self-preservation, worked to better those around them for the contributions they made, and highlights the importance of being able to self-sacrifice and exhibit conscious morality as markers of humanity.

If this is a man, then what keeps man from losing his life? Morality is a structural part of humans in a society, but on a more personal level, characteristics like one’s identity, possessions, and names are the structure to which a man can stand on. Primo asks us to imagine “a man who is deprived of … everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs” (Levi, 27) The prisoner’s last shreds of evidence of their free lives are taken away, and although their physical body remains moving, they are “exterminated” nonetheless. This points to the double meaning of the extermination camp, where physical bodies were extinguished alongside life the way people knew it. Identity was next, and Levi quickly learned “that I am Haftling. My number is 174517” (Levi, 27). With possessions gone and names taken, the prisoners are left to scramble for any semblance of structure that they have to stand on to prove to themselves that they have life beyond the ability to move themselves.

Loss of ability to think was less tangible of an offense than the removal of possession and identity, but it may have been just as important to the prisoner’s sense of life as anything else. If Levi could have chosen any image to enclose all the evil of his time in a single image, he would choose the “emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen” (Levi, 90). It’s interesting that Levi chose the image of a man who was biologically alive in the physical sense of the word, yet with a lack of thought. Is he then saying that the millions of deaths from camps such as Auschwitz was less evil? I doubt it. My interpretation of his point here is that the loss of thought was an offense that rivaled that of loss of physical life. In the Ka-Be, one spoke of “other things than hunger and work…When one works…there is no time to think…but here the time is ours” (Levi, 55). Here, the statement “the time is ours” holds a meaning deeper than its modern usage to fleetingly denote the fact that there was “free time”, but that in Auschwitz, being able to “own time” was as important in a base level as an actual possession – to have time and thought for yourselves when it was scarce everywhere else. When Descartes was attempting to discover something in the world he would be able to deem irrefutable, he came up with the statement “I think, therefore I am”. In the Ka-Be, the prisoners are able to at least confirm this shred of reality while they, for a fleeting moment, own their own thoughts and time. This ability to think is what keeps them “alive” and separates themselves from the image of pure evil Levi depicts.

With a title like If this is a man, Levi allows the reader to go in a seemingly infinite number of interpretations. However, in his survival story, he challenges the base assumptions people hold about humanity, and allows one to converge upon their own definition of the importance of individualism, question their own morality, and re-evaluate their perspective on life itself. While I flailed about attempting to get to the bottom of such questions of the world, only more arisen, perhaps mirroring the stacking of suffering that those prisoners faced in that horrible death camp of Auschwitz, but hopefully, never amounting to that degree of a dilemma.