Chapter 17

“Part of our existence lies in the feelings of those near to us. This is why the experience of someone who has lived for days during which man was merely a thing in the eyes of man is non-human. We three were for the most part immune from it, and we owe each other mutual gratitude. That is why my friendship with Charles will prove lasting.(172)”

The camp did devastating things to people. It deprived them of their life, their joy, their family. To get what I’m about to say into focus, think of dorm students. We live away from our parents, and we get so used to it that its sometimes hard to go back home. We’re not used to having close family around us. In the camp people got used to having no joys, to living without basic needs. A lot of people had the experience of living as a non-human. What makes Levi special and his three friends is that they didn’t get affected by being a non-human. That proved to be very useful. Because they could function as normal humans, they were able to get more done. They could think creatively, and could give resources to others, instead of taking it all for their own. If they had taken it all for themselves, they wouldn’t have been able to get back to their real homes. They wouldn’t have gotten back to the life that they used to have. This refers back to the golden rule, “do unto other as you would have them do unto you.” Its hard to get our minds around the fact that before this rule was applied, but now it is. I’m almost not sure what to think either. But, somehow, we need to obey God’s standards in all of it, even if we go to concentration camp. We need to hold on to God’s standards, and release our own. I think that is how we will survive.

Chapter 16

“Because we also are broken, conquered: even if we know how to adapt ourselves, even if we have finally learnt how to find our food and to resist the fatigue and cold, even if we return home.(150)”

The German’s conquered the Prisoners, and the prisoners know it. Primo may have survived Auschwitz, but he was defeated. By defeated I am not referring to death, but spirit. The quote stats that they is more to not being broken then just adapting and living. To stand up against problems requires more. To fully comprehend this will require experience in a concentration camp, and since I hope none can say, “been there, done that” this will not be an easy topic. Maybe it has to do with faith. Before all they had to do was follow orders, steal and some other things. But now they’ve been given a choice, they have been given the choice to try and escape. They have been broken, because they can longer try to fight back. The prisoners have been lowered to the bottom, not physically, but spiritually. Even if they had the choice, Primo and the others are dead. There is no will left to stand up for what they believe in, even if the had the choice to. There is no will left to change things, they have no will to oppose power. The people in the camp were broken down and conquered. But people also have a miraculous way of getting up when they are down. Just in the next chapter we see more humanity returning to them. What makes a lot of these prisoners unique is that they were conquered, but they didn’t let that fact get in their way of fixing themselves.

Chapter 15

“These girls sing, like girls sing in laboratories all over the world, and it makes us deeply unhappy. They talk among themselves: they talk about the rationing, about their fiances, about their homes, about the approaching holidays...(143)”

Naturally as humans we want to be the best. We want to exceed others and be looked up to. We want others to bow down before and exclaim that we are the best. That’s probably why Simba wanted to be king, but its true. We want success. We want a good job. Now image if you had those ambitions in life. You wanted to be the best, and have the best. And you firmly believe you could too. But then one day it all changed. Because of your ethnicity, a culture that had no reason to be against you, took your life, your money, and made you live out on the street. Everyday now you see them as the walk to a from work. You see them talking about taking a vacation, about going to Hawaii. Their happy. The sing on the street, in their house, and at work. It makes you unhappy because that’s the kind of life you wanted, you wanted to be happy, and now their happy, and you aren’t. This is what is happening. The jews before their deportation expected a lot from life. They didn’t get it. The work until they die, and then some. When someone who has been through that much sees someone who is extremely happy, they start to get upset. If my life was taken from me, I would get upset over those that still had a life. But to men who have not seen life in so long, how can they feel anger. All the anger they could have felt was released on the German’s. So they sit there, unhappy at joy, because it is not their own.

Chapter 14

“Kraus misses his stroke, a lump of mud flies up and splatters over my knees. It is not the first time it has happened ,I warn him to be careful, but without much hope: he is Hungarian, he understands German badly and does not know a word of French. He is tall and thin, wears glasses and has a curious, small, twisted face; when he laughs he looks like a child, and he often laughs he works too much and too vigorously: he has not yet learnt our underground art of economizing on everything, on breath, movements, even thoughts. He does not yet know that it is better to be beaten, because one does not normally die of blows, but one does of exhaustion, and badly, and when one grows aware of it, it is already too late. He still thinks... oh no, poor Kraus, this is not reasoning, it is only the stupid honesty of a small employee, he brought it along with him, and he seems to think that his present situation is like outside, where it is honest and logical to work, as well as being of advantage, because according to what everyone says, the more one works the more one earns and eats.(132)”

When in Rome, do as the Romans. We’ve all heard that saying, but how many of us follow that. Well, it all depends on whether or not you choose to succumb to others belief’s or not. You could say that you will not change yourself no matter what people say, or you can change what you think every time says something. Both have positive and negative effects. If you don’t change yourself, you cannot be corrected, and will have trouble in many environments as you cannot change to fit in. But on the other hand, if you change yourself constantly, how can anyone determine what you believe, and is it possible to believe anything? What is happening to Kraus is that he is no changing to his environment. He is using the same techniques found in the real world as in the concentration camp. He works hard, expecting more food. That is why he won’t survive. If he wants to survive, he has to change himself. He has to work as if this work is nothing to him, he has to work slowly as to conserve energy. Work yes, but if the people you are trying to please will not reward you, what is the point? Yes, it sounds bad to lower your standards, but in a place that has no standards, is it really necessary to have any at all? I guess my point is this. The main point in life is to survive. Sometimes you have to go against your standards, and adopt true standards. We need to put our own ideas behind us, and rely on what will help us get through life.

Chapter 13

“Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas chamber the day after tomorrow and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking any more? Can Kuhn fail to realize that next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean gain?(130)”

We so often assume that if we love God and obey him nothing will happen to us. That is not true. God does not make our life perfect, because we not perfect. But what he does do is he helps us with our struggles. If we call out to him in our distress he will answer us. But what we want is not always what the maker of the universe wants. The maker of the universe has a mind we cannot even understand. If we then think that we can ask for something, and it was based on our own wisdom, then we are very mistaken. The folly of God is greater then man’s wisdom. So if we thank God for saving us from some horrible thing, and other people are going there, we cannot thank God for saving us, because that is a disgrace to God. Our maker has control over everything. He chooses things are right, not what we always want. To thank Him for allowing another person to die should not bring gratitude, but remorse. So what is happening is the camp is wrong. A man is thanking God because he was not killed, when those around him will be mercilessly killed. God has control of everything. This is an abomination to the human race, we should in no way thank God for sparing us. Something like the concentration camp is over our heads to know what God was thinking. So we shouldn’t try and understand. We should just accept.

Chapter 12

“ But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.(122)”

We live with people we look up to. When we look at someone who is above us, we want to be like them. We want to be the people they are, so we imitate them. We change ourselves to be more like them, because we think that if we do, we will have what they have. Primo may have no imitated this man Lorenzo, but he did learn something from the experience. He learned that he is still a man. He realized that there are good people left in the world. Levi wasn’t exactly living a Christian life. He would steal, and do about anything to survive. But when he saw Lorenzo, he realized that one could survive in the camp without being corrupted. I’m not sure if Levi was immediately affected, but we do know this. In a couple of days when the Germans leave he would change back into a man with morals. In a way, that’s very similar to what Christ did for us. We were sinning in a world in which nothing mattered. We were dead, we had no real life within us. But God said that he loved the world, and because of that he came down to earth in the form of a child, to save us. He lived a blameless life, one without sin, and set an example for us. When he came he showed how to really live, and we realized we were dead. He brought us back to life and we now realize that we are men, made in the image of God.

Chapter 11

“And after ‘ When I came?’ Nothing. A hole in my memory. ‘Before Aeneas ever named it so.’ Another hole. A fragment floats into my mind, not relevant: ‘...nor piety To my old father, not the wedded love That should have comforted Penelope...’, is it correct?(112)”

Its funny that poetry can represent our lives so well. In this case what Primo and his friend are saying is not exactly what they feel, it’s a quote from a book. But yet, its so similar to their own memory. They hardly know where they came from. The things in the past are not important anymore. As a Jewish girl named Raga once said that is isn’t important about where she came from, but that she was Jew. Because is isn’t. In the concentration camp, you cannot use your old lifestyle to get you through. The concentration camp has rules that don’t make sense. The have also forgot things of the past because of that. Because they are forced to make a new lifestyle to live, they forget their old self and the knowledge that they used to have. But what is happening here is important, this could have been the reason Primo survived. He remembered the past because his friend concealed him from the concentration camp for only a few minutes. He became something more then living. He became more then just atoms. He became a man. But the end of the poetry also has meaning. In the end it talks about how the love that penelope got never satisfied her, and how he didn’t respect his dad. This is what the concentration camp also is. No respect, no love. There is nothing here but wasteland. Again, it was fortunate for Primo to realize that he still has some sort of living soul within him.