The events of this book are not told in chronological order, but described as reflections on various aspects of life in the labour camps.
Primo Levi, a 24 year old Italian Jewish man, is arrested by Italy’s newly-arisen Fascist Republic. Believing that he is in greater danger as a political dissident, Levi outs himself as a Jew and is quickly sent to an internment camp in Italy, near Modena. A few weeks later, German SS officers arrive in the camp and all the Jewish prisoners are loaded onto trains headed for Poland. After days without food or water and in horribly cramped compartments, the Jewish prisoners are unloaded in Auschwitz. Most of them are immediately sent to be exterminated in the crematoriums, although a small number of healthy men, including Levi, are sent as labourers to a rubber factory called the Buna.
Prisoners are assigned to a work squad, where the daily routine is enforced by a cacophony of shouting in a variety of languages, as well as beatings. Some work sites are located kilometres away from the barracks where private corporations maintain plants to utilise the slave labour. The prisoners walk to these sites in their prison-issue cotton shirts, jackets, and wooden clogs in below-freezing temperatures. Hunger is constant, to the point that the men dream of food and make eating movements in their sleep. Due to a work injury, Levi spends a few weeks in the Ka-Be infirmary where he learns of the process of selection to send those no longer able to work to the gas chambers in Birkenau. He finds out that the Ka-Be is the center of an extensive barter system where all belongings of those admitted are confiscated for later use to barter for medical supplies which are stolen from the private corporation worksites by prisoners out to improve their meager lives.
Levi analyses the complex political snd economic system in the camp alongside the dynamics of the antipathy that exists between the German political soldiers in the SS and the (Nazi Party) industrialists. At the center of the book, he lays out the personal qualities and strategies that improve the prisoners’ chance of survival. Levi’s turning point comes with an appointment to the chemical Kommando, a squad of scientists tasked with supporting the Buna synthetic rubber plant. An influx of Hungarian internees in the Spring creates overcrowded conditions. In June and July, the inmates feel fleeting hope hearing news of developments in the war: the Allies landing in Normandy; the Russian offensive; and a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.
In August, the Allies began bombing the area of Poland where Auschwitz is located, however chose to not bomb the camps. The German SS commandant conducts a selection to deal with the overcrowding in the camp into two categories: those who are sent to die in the gas chambers at Birkenau, and those who are spared. Levi and his best friend, Alberto, are spared. SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ is an unadorned, emotionally restrained recitation of facts. The book adheres to the details of Levi’s own experience, avoiding second hand information and unsupported generalisation about the larger meanings of the events, as strongly as SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ strives for credibility in the face of the incredible.
Its a remarkable work of powerful moral power. His subject is not the Nazis’ oppression, humiliation and torture, and murder of of millions, but rather how easily humanity can become degraded under such circumstances. In the midst of this debasement, Levi finds rare and astonishing models of heroism and humanism. He concludes his memoir- meditation by turning to us, by challenging and charging us: “We now invite the reader to contemplate the possible meaning in Auschwitz– of the words ‘good’ ‘evil’, ‘just’, ‘unjust’ : Let each judge…. how much of our ordinary moral world could survive on this side of the barbed wire?”
Heartbreaking clarity from a visionary and exemplary human being
