...Survival in Auschwitz In the book Survival in Auschwitz, the author Primo Levi illustrates the hardships himself and others endured during the capture of Jews in 1943. Originally titled If This Is a Man, Levi expresses captivating images and vivid emotions of his experience of inhumane treatment. The memories indicate the intense and extreme situations all Jews suffered in the totalitarian state of Nazi control. Levi learns an immense amount of survival tactics in order to breathe every waking day of his new life. The weak were tested physically and emotionally as the path of death was effortless, while the road to survival seemed impossible and unachievable. Throughout the narrative, Primo transforms from an apathetic victim to a progressive survivor in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz. The concept of black marketing, knowledge in chemistry and his spirituality all contributed toward the survival of Primo Levi and others in Auschwitz. According to Primo Levi, illegality, deceit, infidelity and sin were all relevant in the concentration camp. These characteristics made up Auschwitz and were used as necessities in order to survive such horrid conditions. Those who were captured and sent to German camps quickly noticed that this was a place where happiness was extinct. Little pieces of bread, shoes or soup bowls were perceived as rather large when consumed and used by other prisoners. The smallest amount of food attracted any inmates, creating trust issues...
Words: 989 - Pages: 4
...Primo Levi and his group were captured and taken in 1943 in Italy during World War II by the Nazis for participating in a resistance group called “Justice and Liberty”. They were sent to Auschwitz Buna, a factory that created synthetic rubber and latex. After eleven astonishing months surviving as a laborer and a chemist inside Auschwitz, Primo Levi and the whole camp was saved by the Russian Army. Once Levi entered the camp his personal background and physical capabilities influenced the nature of his life in Auschwitz, as it did too for many other prisoners. Before World War II began Levi had just gotten a degree in chemistry in the University of Turin. In Auschwitz the Nazis opened a chemistry unit and with his professional background as chemist, Levi was sent to work there. This meant superior living conditions thereby increasing his chances of survival especially during the harsh winter. It is clear from Levis account that a prisoner’s physical condition, mental capacities and skill set were determining factors in...
Words: 1094 - Pages: 5
...Alexia Gonzalez Political Science 4823: The Holocaust/ the Shoah Final Paper December 12, 2013 The Comparative Analysis of the Holocaust Ethnic cleansing and genocide are considered to coexist in a spectrum of assaults on nations or religio-ethnic groups. These threats were more prominent during the 20th century which caused massive violations of human rights and jeopardized the overall security of humans. Determinants of ethnic cleansing and genocide root from socio-political factors influenced by deeply embedded ideologies which are manifested by political leaders of specific regime types. During World War II, German authorities targeted Jews and other minority groups like the gypsies and Pols due to their perceived racial inferiority. The German ideology in attempt to eradicate these auxiliary groups led to the conflict known as the Shoah. The Shoah is the biblical word meaning destruction and it is the standard Hebrew term for the murder of European Jewry. The Shoah was the systematic, bureaucratic and state sponsored persecution of six million Jews. Comparable to other ethnic based genocides, Germans believed they were racially superior and that Jews were inferior; and deemed a threat to the “German racial community” resulting in their mass murder. Various interpretations of the Shoah has given rise to similar attitudes and opinions regarding its historical events. The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, is one of the largest resources of its kind which includes...
Words: 3519 - Pages: 15
...Primo Levi’s work entitled “If This Is a Man,” talks about the manner in which prisoners in Auschwitz were subjected to extremely inhumane treatment by the Nazis. The book is quite different from the normal holocaust books, as it emphasizes on the duty to prevent recurrence of such tragic incidences. Primo was an Italian Jew, who was detained for his political acts during the 1944. He was punished not for his politics that could almost certainly have implication of execution, but for his faith. Consequently, his reality became that of a captive in a Nazi work camp. However, because he was as a chemist, he was able to spend some time working inside, and this was most probably the reason he survived till the Red Army freed the camp in 1945 (Levi,...
Words: 1126 - Pages: 5
...The memoirs Alicia: My Story and Survival in Auschwitz provide two very different accounts of the same event: the Holocaust. There are very basic and obvious differences between Alicia Jurman and Primo Levi, which are shown in the table below. Although these differences seem minor, they had a major affect on the differences between the events Alicia and Primo faced. Age Gender Country of Origin Concentration Camp v. Hiding Alicia Jurman 9 yrs - 15 yrs Female Poland Hiding Primo Levi 24 yrs Male Italy Concentration Camp - Auschwitz Alicia was only nine years old when Poland was invaded by the Germans. Alicia’s young age during the Holocaust earned her the right to be called a “child hero”. It is possible that her young age added to her determination. She knew she was in constant danger, but it did not seem that she had a full understanding of just how serious that danger was. Primo was also very young, and even described how his young age contributed to his naivety: “I was twenty-four, with little wisdom, no experience and a decided tendency….. to live in an unrealistic world of my own…..I cultivated a moderate and abstract sense of rebellion”. Although Primo discussed his immaturity, it still seemed that he had a better understanding of the gravity of the situation. The gender differences also played a role in the different experiences. As a female, Alicia was more able to go into hiding. Even if Primo had escaped, it was too risky for men to hide...
Words: 2389 - Pages: 10
...However, all of this progress seems so diminished because we currently have a disrespectful and bigoted man as a front-runner for the presidency of the United States. Is there a remedy to prejudice? Will we ever live in a world without bigotry? It’s truly hard to say, some people will always have differing opinions on issues such as these. We can’t just accept this though, we must always try to educate everyone to treat all humans with respect. As a society, we learn new ways to educate ourselves and others, and we learn these answers from our past. Through the past we know what does work, and what doesn’t work for our society to grow. Two books in particular from our Honors texts this semester show us these answers: Mrs. Dalloway and Survival in Auschwitz. Both of these texts are the best tools we have to learn about combating discrimination of those with mental illnesses and/or those from different races. Mrs. Dalloway has been above all others my favorite text this semester. It has an intriguing story, interesting characters, and so many valuable lessons to take away from it. Mrs. Dalloway has a hard analysis on mental health, especially: depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. It also has a very harsh and realistic view on the opinions of mental health during this time period (and sometimes today). Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith are the two main protagonists, and both characters are the representatives for mental health in this text. Clarissa struggles with...
Words: 1436 - Pages: 6
...highly unlikely that they have experienced anything like the camps in their lives, which is detrimental in terms of building a believable story. Primo Levi, author and victim of Auschwitz, wrote Survival in Auschwitz to inform others of the horrific events and conditions that he was forced to live through in his journey to survival. Conversely, Roberto Benigni, Italian...
Words: 1109 - Pages: 5
...several months later, and explained the brutal treatment that they encountered, but most people did not believe him. 1944 the Nazis gained power in Hungry, and all Jews were crowded into a small ghetto. After a while the Nazis started to deport all the Jews in the ghetto to Auschwitz. On the train the Jews were packed in, with almost no air to breathe, everyone was thirsty and hungry. After some days of traveling the Jews arrived in Czech, and a German officer takes over the train. The officer warned everyone that to give of their valuables or get shot. The train doors were then nailed to prevent people from escaping. Madame Schächter, was the first person to go crazy on the train, she starts to yell about a fire, which is not there. After some time a few boys beat her to silent as her son watches in fear, but the next night she started to yell once again. The Jews arrive in Auschwitz, but it was not as they have been told. They were told although it is a labor camp; the families will be kept as one. As the train traveled through the barb wire they see chimneys of smoke, and there is terrible smell, which they later find out that it is human flesh. The camp that they arrived in is the processing camp for Auschwitz. At Birkenau the Nazis make a selection form those who will live and those who will die. Some of the elders in the camp convince Ellie and his father to lie about their age, in order to stay alive. Ellie and his father were able to stay together, in the work camp. Seeing...
Words: 2319 - Pages: 10
... double-spaced, with standard 1” margins, and good use of the text/s or film/s discussed, indicate and identify quotations in the accepted academic way (which I or the Writing Lab will be glad to make clear if necessary) without resort to unnecessary foot- or endnotes. Note that you also have the option of writing on an idea of your own as long as you deal with a work on the syllabus and run it by me first, and that you may expand your presentation, if you have given one. 1. “Primo Levi entitles his first book If This Is a Man (Si questo e un uomo), but it became well known and read widely in translation from the Italian as Survival in Auschwitz aspects of the book.” Discuss. 2. Discuss the possible significance in the narrative as a whole of the episode in Elie Wiesel’s Night (pp. 58-9 in the Hill and Wang edition) where Elie finds his Kapo Idek having sex with a young woman in the empty warehouse. 3. In the last three paragraphs of Chapter 13 of Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi describes a man called Kuhn praying aloud, “thanking God that he has not been chosen” in “the great selection of October 1944.” In the title story of This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Tadek writes of “naked, sweat drenched men” crowding the barrack aisles, and “directly beneath me [. . .] a rabbi” reading from a Hebrew prayer book and “wailing loudly, monotonously” (Penguin, p. 31). Compare the perspectives in these two scenes and the tone and attitudes of each narrator...
Words: 537 - Pages: 3
...however, the Nazis managed to destroy the very essence of justice, and life, for millions of their victims. In Auschwitz, as with all concentration camps, justice was non-existent. There are very important things missing from Auschwitz that Socrates would have considered essential for justice to exist. Let us start by confirming above all things that the main point of punishment is a consequence of wrong doing: the degree of punishment agreeing with the degree of crime (hopefully but not always the case). That is the basic idea of justice in my mind. For Primo Levi and twelve million others of the Nazi’s victims in the concentration camps, this was most certainly not the case. Yes the Nazi’s did have political and criminal prisoners that somewhat earned their spot there but the large majority of the prisoners never did anything wrong whatsoever. This is the first and most clear way in which justice was destroyed. Their crime was existing, whether they Jewish, gypsy, handicap, or what have you. On top of that, the crimes against humanity that the Nazis committed were so horrible, so grotesque and unspeakable, that the only deserving victims of such treatment were the ones responsible for it. Socrates stated "Happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils, but in never having them." (Gorgias) The second method in which justice was destroyed in Auschwitz was the deprivation of humanly necessities. This is unjust because they are reducing and devolving the just mind...
Words: 869 - Pages: 4
...“Violence walked the streets, smiling, not naked.” (Hans Magnus Enzensberger). Even though the persecution of Jews needed and there was no longer physical violence occurring, many people were still affected. Hand Magnus Enzensberger and Primo Levi wrote about post war Germany and the effects it had and the journey that people have gone through and were still faced with. World War II lasted in 1939 through 1945. It was between the Axis Power which was Hermany, Japan, and Italy and the allied powers which was Britain, France, Australia and the US. It was a mass genocide of Jews, which totaled up to more than 80 million people. In European literature, authors shed light on the affects and the outcomes of post war Germany. It sheds light on how the...
Words: 572 - Pages: 3
...but even in the darkest of times and among demons we seem to find some shed of hope and light. Ruth Kluger and Primo Levi are able to express their darkest and hopeful moments and thoughts through their exquisite and precise wording of their memoirs. Ruth Kluger’s memoir is titled Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood...
Words: 1126 - Pages: 5
...The Holocaust ended May 8th, 1945 with the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest camp in Nazi territory and the one where most deaths took place; but for those who were lucky enough to survive, the effects of the war would remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not only were the Jews stripped of all their belongings and identity, but they were also forced to betray their own ethical codes. As survivors tried to assimilate back in to every day life, the memories of the family they had lost and the brutal events they witnessed kept resurfacing, leaving long-term psychological effects such as: anxiety, depression, psychosomatic disorders, survival guilt, isolation, and sleep disturbances. Not only did the survivors themselves experience these effects, but their children and grandchildren would as well. Victor Frankl’s memoir Man Search for Meaning, Lawrence Langer’s memoir Holocaust Testimonies: The...
Words: 2049 - Pages: 9
...population. In the camps, Nazis inflicted horrendous crimes upon innocent men, women, and children. The survival rate once residing in the camps were slim, mainly centered around the threats to survive in the camps, through dehumanization, physical suffering, and mental abuse. Out of thousands of internment camps the most famous is Auschwitz, located in what is now Poland. It was there in Auschwitz, where an Italian Jewish chemist, Primo Levi, against all odds, survived a year at the camp, before it was liberated in 1945. As soon as Levi entered the camp any form of identity was immediately taken away from him. His was stripped of his belongings, and given a new form of identification. Levi recounted the painful experience by stating, “I have learnt that I am Haftling. My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die” (Levi, 27). Levi soon learned, if you did not respond to your said number, then beatings or cuffs would be served as punishment. “Undesirables” who entered the camp,...
Words: 1144 - Pages: 5
...This theodicy ascribes people’s suffering and pain to God’s punishment for people and their ancestors’ sins. Another perspective on the evil nature of the Holocaust is described by the Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi, in his article “Survival in Auschwits: The Nazi Assualt on Humanity.” Describing his experiences and impressions from the Holocaust, Levi believes that there is no distinction between good and evil in the camp, but the lack of structure and any social norms there makes this place evil from the outsider’s perspective. Levi was captured by Nazis at the age of twenty-four when he was participating in the Resistance movement, Justice and Liberty. Being an “Italian citizen of Jewish race”, he became a victim of the Jewish persecution and was sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz where the number of the Jews was drastically increasing over short periods of time. Age, gender, disabilities did not matter, and the only accent was placed on the Jewish ascendancy. Levi and other “six hundred and fifty pieces” were loaded on the trains “which never return, and of which, shuddering and always a little incredulous” they had so often heard...
Words: 1635 - Pages: 7
