Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Survival in Auschwitz, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dehumanization and Resistance
Adaptability, Chance, and Survival
Moral Relativity
Racial Hierarchy
Oppression, Power, and Cruelty
Summary
Analysis
Primo Levi, a 24-year-old Italian Jew, is captured by the Fascist Militia on behalf of the “new-born Fascist Republic,” which he has been working against as a resistance organizer. Believing (mistakenly) that his political crimes will earn him a death sentence if discovered, Levi instead declares his status as an “Italian citizen of Jewish Race.” On this admission, he is sent to a detention camp in Modena, Italy, where he waits for several weeks with other individuals arrested by the Fascists, hundreds of whom are Jewish, though there are foreigners and political prisoners as well. After several weeks, a unit of German SS officers arrive, inspect the camp, and declare that every single Jew will be moved to a new location. They should be ready the next morning “for a fortnight of travel. For every person missing at the roll call, ten would be shot.”
Levi’s assumption that he is endangered by his political crimes rather than his ethnic identity suggests that he did not truly perceive the threat that the German expansion was to Jews all over Europe. Although not discussed in the book, Germany has recently occupied central and northern Italy to liberate Mussolini—who was deposed by his own government—and install him as a puppet governor in support of the Third Reich. This explains the Germans’ swift yet seemingly unsurprising arrival on the scene. Their threat over roll call immediately establishes them as brutally efficient and precise.
Themes
Most everyone understands what this journey must mean, as they have met other refugees who have already fled the German expansion. Although usually, when one is condemned to die, they are given a moment of respite and offered whatever comfort suits them, the night is chaotic and fretful as people pack, prepare, pray, or celebrate one last time. When preparations have been made, a group of people light candles and lament together. Levi recalls that is possessed by an ancient grief, though new to him, “the grief without hope of exodus that is renewed every century.” The sun rises and the new day dawns, and the Jewish people await their fate in a “collective, uncontrolled panic.”
The fact that the Germans do not allow the Jewish people even the time to hold ceremony or prepare themselves for death illustrates just how little regard they showed for the Jewish race in general, not even seeing them as human beings, since human beings are typically allowed (if nothing else) the chance to collect themselves and find comfort before being executed. The grief that is “renewed every century” suggests that as terrifying as this event is, it seems but the latest in a long history of oppressions.
Themes
The Germans count the 650 Jewish prisoners—reporting that all the “pieces” are present—and load them onto cargo trains, packed so tightly that there is hardly room to move one’s arms. The Germans strike them at random as they climb aboard, though they feel no pain, only confusion at how someone could hurt another “without anger.” They travel that way for days, suffering from hunger and thirst and the winter’s cold as they pass through various Austrian towns. The cramped quarters make it nearly impossible to lie down. Although they are struck with despair, the physical pain and discomfort serves to distract them, and keep them from the abyss. Of the 45 people in his train car, only four will ever return home—the highest percentage of survivors of any of the train cars. Intuiting this, the Jewish people begin to say their farewells to whichever strangers are near.
Once again, the Germans do not view the Jewish prisoners as human beings but as assets, or “pieces.” This seems to allow them to commit great acts of brutality and violence with a chilling nonchalance. As hinted at by the Jewish people’s confusion, Levi will struggle throughout the story to comprehend how the Germans can undertake such violence and brutality in such a calm, disconnected manner. Levi’s observation that only four people in his section of the train will live through what they are about to endure foreshadows the prevalent death and hardships he will soon face, and establishes his story as one of rare survival.
Themes
The train arrives at its destination and the Jewish prisoners spill out into the cold night. German officers are waiting for them, speaking in poor Italian, and sort the healthy men out from the rest, offering thin assurances that people will be reunited with their families eventually. Those considered unfit to labor for the Reich are sent away and never seen again. “Thus, in an instant, our women, our parents, our children disappeared.” Two groups of bedraggled, filthy individuals arrive, walking in columns with their heads down, and begin unloading luggage—the new arrivals immediately understand that this is “the metamorphosis that awaited us.” The healthy Jewish men are loaded onto trucks and driven elsewhere. The officer standing guard in Levi’s truck kindly asks each man if he can have their money or jewelry, since they won’t be needing it any longer.
The ease with which the Germans lie—saying that individuals will be reunited with their family—and the civility with which the officer asks the Jewish prisoners for their money or jewelry again underscores how disconnected the captors seem from the suffering they inflict. They seem to go about their tasks as if it were any other job or task that did not involve routine violence and facilitating the deaths of thousands of people. This not only nods to the dehumanization the Germans inflicted on the Jewish people, but also the moral relativity of their actions in their own minds.
Themes
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