Primo Levi 'Survival in Auschwitz'

The book, Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, is an autobiography that talks about the brutal experience of him in Auschwitz. The book is written as if the reader were to be talking one on one with Levi. He describes to the reader's how he saw the men and women lose their humanity overtime because of the treatment in Auschwitz. Throughout his story he describes the dehumanization and slowly realizes that it was not just his survival and dehumanization, but it was everyone’s. He also explains to the readers how all the prisoners came together as one to retain their humanity because the suffering of one was also the suffering of all. This books teaches the readers that one

Primo Levi was one of these survivors. In Survival in Auschwitz, Levi struggles to articulate the atrocities that occurred in Auschwitz while simultaneously admitting the impossibility of such an undertaking. As he confesses in his book, “…our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man.” A scientist by trade, Levi speaks of his time in Auschwitz in bare, almost clinical terms. Two popular critiques have arisen from this approach: the first, that Levi does not explore his emotions, and the second, that he does not court readers. I’d argue, however, that it is this very boundary built between author and reader that makes Levi’s testimony so effective.

What would it do to a person to go to a concentration camp, see the horrible things, and come out alive? This book, Night, is about Eliezer Wiesel, who is both the main character and the author. Elie’s book is a memorial about his experience in Hitler’s concentration camps, what he went through, and how he survived. This paper is going to be about Eliezer’s horrific experience and the ways that it changed him.

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

Although Levi was never chosen to be a "prominenten", this did not matter as his training as a chemist turned out to be his liberating factor. He was one of three Jewish inmates chosen to work in a chemistry laboratory in the camp. Again Levi refers to his "luck" when he writes "So it would seem that fate …has arranged that we three …suffer neither hunger nor cold this winter" (Levi 140). One must say that to be chosen as one of the three men, out of the 10,000 which comprised the Läger, can only be attributed to luck. In addition to his envied position in the Läger, his background as a chemist also proved vital when the prisoners had to fend for themselves after the germans abandoned the camp due to the encroachment of the Russian army. Since all municipal provisions were deserted as a result of the hasty departure of the Germans, it was Levi who was able to light the stove using flints stolen from the laboratory. This in turn enabled them to melt snow for water and cook the potatoes and cabbage that they were able to salvage. It was also Levi who used an abandoned battery from the lorry to finally provide light in their room.

85 years ago, over a 12 year period, nearly six million Jews were killed in a genocide called The Holocaust. The Holocaust was led by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler was their leader. The mass murders took place at concentration camps throughout Europe. The majority of concentration camps resided in Poland and Germany. Many people believe there were only a few concentration camps. “However, researchers found that the Nazis had actually established 20,000 camps between 1933 and 1945” (“How Many Camps,” n.d.). In this paper I will be discussing the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Primo Levi, in his novel Survival in Auschwitz (2008), illustrates the atrocities inflicted upon the prisoners of the concentration camp by the Schutzstaffel, through dehumanization. Levi describes “the denial of humanness” constantly forced upon the prisoners through similes, metaphors, and imagery of animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization (“Dehumanization”). He makes his readers aware of the cruel reality in the concentration camp in order to help them examine the psychological effects dehumanization has not only on those dehumanized, but also on those who dehumanize. He establishes an earnest and reflective tone with his audience yearning to grasp the reality of genocide.

Sometimes, we love to hear the story of a tragedy. For example, some of the most well liked tragedies of all time include Gone with the Wind, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, many of Shakespeare’s plays, and a Streetcar Named Desire. These are not only stories though; they have their sadness but throughout there is also hope and there are also morals, these are things to gain by these stories. The story the Levi needs to share with us has no hope, it has no moral storyline that we can learn from

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the

Reading the novel Survival in Auschwitz by author Primo Levi leads one to wonder whether his survival is attributed to his indefinite will to survive or a very subservient streak of luck. Throughout the novel, he is time and again spared from the fate that supposedly lies ahead of all inhabitants of the death camp at Auschwitz. Whether it was falling ill at the most convenient times or coming in contact with prisoners who had a compassionate, albeit uncommon, disposition, it would seem as though the Gods were always smiling upon him. Although throughout the novel primo is characterized as a very willing and competent individual, one can not say that his personality or his training as a chemist

Sobibor extermination camp could be found in eastern Poland from March 1942 to October 1943. Sobibor was the second NAZI extermination camp of WW2 and was under created through the NAZI “Operation Reinhard.” From May 1942 to July 1942, approximately 100,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor. They came from Lublin, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria. The camp consisted of 20-30 men from the SS controlling and killing Jewish people. About 200 to 300 Jews worked in teams at the gas chambers and burial pits where they cleaned out the killing rooms, removed gold teeth from the corpses and pushed trolleys heaped with bodies towards the pits. Another 1,000 Jews worked at the railway cleaning up the rail trucks and removing debris, and in teams at the

In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi depicts a life where, under the severe conditions of hunger, cold, illness, and constant fear, men are transformed into beasts, and where justice and morality become insignificant in the fight for survival. Upon entering Auschwitz, families are separated and immediately hundreds are sent to their deaths. Tattooed and given their new identity of serial numbers, many forget their own past and their names. Initially, Levi accepts his imminent death as everyone emphasizes that the only exit from Auschwitz “is by way of the chimney.”

Today’s interactive oral taught me a lot about the context of the book If This is a Man by Primo Levi. Prior to the interactive oral I knew little about Auschwitz. I knew about the political aspects of World War II from studies in school. However, I knew little about the death camps, what purpose they served and what conditions were like in the camp.

During Adolf Hitler’s reign as chancellor and leader of the Nazi party, numerous people suffered daily and struggled to survive under the strict regulations and vigilant watch of the Nazi forces. From the concentration camps to the streets of Germany, constant loss and grief seemed to prevail. Both prisoner and common man must fight and confront their hurdles or risk losing it all. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner expose the hardships and stories of the two men during the rise and control of the Nazi party. Levi, an Italian Jew and chemist, was deported to Auschwitz and was forced into the working life of a prisoner. Haffner, an Aryan journalist and law student, lived in Berlin and became engulfed in the manifestation of Nazism. Regardless of different backgrounds and circumstances, both men felt the weight of the nightmare they lived and were confronted with similar obstacles such as a drastic shift in lifestyle, the battle of willpower, and loss of identity through personal ethics. Both men defied odds and lived to tell their tales.

The intensity and extent of horrific practices enforced by Hitler and the Nazis were unprecedented and unanticipated. Each of those who were sent to the concentration camps entered blindly into the depravity that awaited them. Snatched away from civilization and subjected to less-than-bestial treatment, the prisoners were forced to do everything in their power to preserve their lives or else perish. Primo Levi was a law-abiding scholar before entering the Lager and was well-adjusted to communities built upon mutually beneficial systems. However, upon becoming a Häftling, he quickly learned that in the concentration camps a “man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly,”. Although theft and deception might have been dishonorable and held in disdain prior to his imprisonment, Primo Levi’s new station in life made every morsel of food and scrap of