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
After 20 minutes, the new arrivals are unloaded from the truck and deposited in a large, cold room, where they are left alone for what seems like hours. An SS officer arrives, and after finding a German-speaking Jewish person to translate for him, explains that the Jewish prisoners must arrange themselves in rows, strip naked and set their clothes bundled beside them on the floor. The officer seems dispassionate and calm. Prisoners with razors and shears enter, hastily shave each man completely bald, and leave, whereupon the naked arrivals are pushed into a large shower and left alone again for another long period. Levi acts reassuring towards his fellows, but he is secretly convinced they will soon all die.
Continuing the theme of dehumanization, the Jewish prisoners are treated much like objects in an assembly line. They are moved, sorted, and treated by different people at various stages, all without regard for their personal wellbeing. Levi’s reassurance towards his comrades, despite his own conviction that they are doomed, becomes a common occurrence throughout the story, suggesting that in the face of such overwhelming, false hope is perhaps better than no hope.
Themes
A Hungarian prisoner enters the shower and speaks to them in poor Italian, explaining that they are in Monowitz, a section of Auschwitz, and will be placed in an Arbeitslager (work camp) that produces rubber with roughly ten thousand other prisoners. There are a variety of jobs—this man is a doctor, for instance—and everyone will be put to work. The Hungarian answers questions as well as he can, but many of his answers are nonsensical. He leaves, and hot water pours from the shower heads for “five minutes of bliss” before the Jews are herded out of the shower, naked and freezing, into another room, given a ragged set of clothes and wooden-soled shoes, and made to run 100 yards through the snow to yet another hut before they can dress themselves.
The rhythm of brief comfort followed by misery—from the cold room to the hot shower to freezing naked outdoors—will become a constant in the Jewish prisoners’ lives in the concentration camp. Such a rhythm seems only to batter the senses, alternately raising one’s guard and briefly lowering it. The nonsensical nature of the process—showering then being made to run naked across the dirty ground—will also typify their experience, since the camp operates on absurd and arbitrary rules which cause suffering that seemingly lacks sense or purpose.
Themes
Stripped of all possessions, even their own hair, the newly-arrived Jews now feel like hollow men, “reduced to suffering and needs,” whose lives now only represent their utility to their German captors. Levi is tattooed with the number 174517 on his wrist, and he officially becomes a Häftling, a prisoner of the camp. The tattooed number becomes his identity and his way of receiving rations each day. In the first weeks, Levi catches himself habitually looking to the place his wristwatch should be, only to see the number instead.
Possession of property is a distinctly human characteristic, and thus stripping one of all possessions furthers the dehumanization of the Jews at the hands of the Germans. The tattooed number on each man’s wrist, sitting where his wristwatch ought to be, thus operates as a symbol of their dehumanization, a permanent reminder that within the camp, they are insignificant, interchangeable pieces in a massive machine.
Themes
Over time, Levi and some of the others realize that the numbers can tell one everything they need to know about another prisoner: when they entered the camps, which convoy they are in, what their nationality is. Those with low numbers are respected and feared, since they are the few Poles and Greeks who have survived for years through shrewdness and ferocity. Those with high numbers are newly arrived, considered to be fools.
The significance of the numbers furthers their dehumanizing quality, since each man’s value in the camp is dictated only by their number, and not by their character, their skills, or their individual traits that make them a unique human being. That those with low numbers are feared indicates that some level of shrewdness or ferocity will be required for survival.
Themes
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After being tattooed, the new arrivals are driven into another hut full of bunks, but they are forbidden to touch them. When any requests are made for amenities, the prisoners are told, “You are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney.” Still desperately thirsty, Levi reaches through the window and grabs an icicle, but a guard strikes him and throws it away. When Levi asks why he did this, the guard tells him, “There is no why here.” Levi realizes that this is the meaning of an extermination camp, to rid one of themselves. Together, they are all “lying on the bottom.”
“There is no why here” is a particularly chilling phrase, revealing that every rule and prohibition of the camp is less a matter of practicality than of inflicting suffering on the Jews at every possible opportunity. Thus, dehumanization is not merely a side effect of the concentration camp, but its intended purpose. The Germans are setting out to destroy the Jewish prisoners’ humanity, and thus to make them view themselves as the Nazis view them.
Themes
As the day draws to a close, the arrivals are let out to see the workers return from their daily labor. Levi meets a young Polish boy of about 16 named Schlome, who explains to him in broken Italian that he has been in the camp for three years, working as an ironsmith. When Levi tells him that he is a trained chemist, Schlome tells him that is a good skill to have. The boy asks Levi where his mother is, and Levi tells him that she is safe, hiding in Italy. The youth embraces Levi, who recalls that he never forgets “his serious and gentle face of a child, which welcomed me on the threshold of the house of the dead.”
The dissonance of meeting a child, who should be filled with the potential of his future life, in a place of death, creates a feeling of horror in the reader and suggests that what occurs in the concentration camps is fundamentally at odds with the way the world should operate. Though not overt, this dissonance itself condemns the crusade of the Nazis and the practice of slavery and subjugation embodied in the concentration camps.
Themes
The arrivals quickly learn the much about the Lager. It is 600 square yards surrounded by electric barbed wire. There are 60 blocks (huts) which each house roughly 200 prisoners. The Häftling population is composed of criminals, political prisoners, and Jewish people, although everyone else has authority over the Jewish prisoners.
This demonstrates the extent of the racial hierarchy that the Germans establish within the camps. In their minds, regardless of where one might sit in the social order, there is nothing lower than a Jewish person—which consequently furthers their aim of dehumanization.
Themes
Every piece of wire or string the prisoners can find has practical value, and everything will be stolen at first opportunity. Each prisoner must always carry their possessions (their shirt, wooden shoes, soup bowl, and spoon) in hand, or sleep with them under their head. The camp is governed by many arbitrary rules—the set of one’s shirt, the number of buttons on their jacket, and so on—that must be observed, or one will be beaten.
The common practice of theft and the arbitrary rules, which nonetheless are punished with beatings, both nod to the fact that morality works differently within the camp than it does in the outside world. This suggests that morality itself is a relative concept, defined by one’s circumstances rather than by permanent rules.
Themes
Shoes are of primary importance, since “death begins with the shoes.” A man wearing broken or ill-fitting shoes invites foot sores or swelling, making it difficult to march and to work. This invites more beatings and punishment, and makes the SS see them as a burden on everyone else, a particularly dangerous scenario.
Shoes operate as a symbol throughout the story for one’s place in the social hierarchy. The Jews are only allowed wooden shoes, which cause dangerous sores and infections, while it will be revealed that other prisoners are allowed leather shoes, which fit more comfortably and do not ruin one’s feet.
Themes
Each man works each day unless they are deemed ill, but one will only be deemed so if the overseers believe their working skills are essential enough to be worth preserving their life. Each man is assigned to work in a Kommando, usually comprised of 50 to 150 laborers, each governed by a Kapo. Unskilled Kommandos are usually led by prisoners, while skilled labor Kommandos most often have Polish or German civilian Kapos. Laborers work with the daylight, between eight and 12 hours per day, according to season.
Once again, the fact that a prisoner is only considered worth treating if they possess valuable skills illustrates the dehumanization of the Jewish people. The German camp officials do not recognize the Jewish prisoners as human beings worth saving, but only as utilities for labor. Thus, if one is unskilled and can be easily enough replaced, it is not even worth offering medical treatment to them. In the Germans’ minds, the Jewish prisoners are only valuable for what labor they can perform, not who they are as individuals.
Themes
Within a month, Levi is accustomed to the ways of the Lager, accustomed to chronic pain and hunger, and to thinking neither of the past nor the future, but only his immediate needs. Levi reflects, “Already my body is not my own.” Theft is no longer a crime, but a necessity; to steal something is to possess it “by full right.” The Italians in the camp meet weekly for a time, but give it up since there are less and less of them each week. They all grow more “deformed and more squalid” as the time passes. Together, they agree “it was better not to think.”
Continuing the theme of dehumanization, Levi finds that as a slave laborer, he does not even feel ownership over his own body, again robbing him of his humanity. Furthermore, not only have the Jews lost the right of possession, but due to the pain of living they even begin to lose their capacity to think or contemplate, another uniquely human characteristic.
Themes
