Primo Levi Survival in Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Reading Primo Levi's book Survival in Auschwitz is an experience which raises a host of important existential questions. These questions refer to the meaning of life and human nature and more specifically to the question of evil that exists in the human heart. This book also explores the other side of human nature and the extreme endurance and strength that lives within the human heart.

Survival in Auschwitz provides insight into the life of Levi during his period in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. The narrative begins with his arrest as an Italian Jew in 1944 and his deportation. The book ends with the liberation of the camp in 1945. The horrors of his experience begins when Levi, with 650 other Jews, is loaded on as freight train and has to undergo a four-day journey to the camp without any food, water or rest. On arrival at the camp a selection process takes place and only 135 of the 650 passengers are admitted to the camp, the other 515 passengers are condemned to the gas chambers.

The book is essentially a personal narrative and one of the most painful aspects emphasized in the narration and description of these experiences is the loss of personal freedom that being as prisoner in the concentration camp means. The loss of freedom and autonomy during the process of incarceration and afterwards is in essence a loss of human feeling for the individual to the machine-like evil of the concentration camp and those who control events.

What strikes one from early on in the book is this reduction of humanity and humaneness to the lowest possible levels, which can be seen as the true horror of Auschwitz. Both physical human life as well as the essential values of human nature is subjugated by the most intense cruelty and barbaric disregard for human values such as compassion. This is what makes this description of a personal experience of Auschwitz so intolerable.

For example, Levi with hundreds of others is stripped naked, his head is shaven and he is given a nondescript uniform with an identification number tattooed on his arm. In other words, all vestiges of his freedom and human identity are eradicated and he feels a sense of both humiliation and confusion as he attempts to assimilate and deal with his new, terrifying situation.

The book therefore raises a number of intriguing and deeply disturbing questions. In the light of the events and experiences in the camp, the question is raised as to what constitutes human nature and what in essence makes people human. The terrible events and experiences of the book also raise the concomitant question of what makes human beings different from animals, or possibly even worse.

This leads to further questions which are suggested by the description and narration. In the light of the Nazi atrocities and desecration of all decent human values, such as compassion and understanding, how are we to understand the deeper reality of human nature? Are society and the ideal of civilized humanity only a veneer that covers an underlying bestiality and barbarity? During the narrative Levi also admits that the prisoners themselves become dehumanized and at times lose feeing for others and that they were reduced to a state of almost animalistic existence by the depravity and cruelty around them.

On another level what this book does is to bring the reader face-to-face with the reality of human evil. Through the detailed and intense descriptions that the author provides of environment in which he lived during the years in Auschwitz, we gain a unique insight into the tangible face and reality of evil. In the process of reading the book we are forced to face a number of very difficult and uncomfortable questions. This refers largely to the question of human nature and the evil that resides within the human heart. Is this an intrinsic part of human nature or does evil only emerge as a result of certain severe and unusual circumstances? The answer to this question is complex and is not given unequivocally in the book. What is implied however is that evil is a part of human being but that good is also present and can manifest itself in response to evil actions. One interpretation of the book is that both evil and goodness reside within the human being.