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
The prisoners of the Lager hear a rumor that shirts will soon be issued once again, taken from a new batch of arrivals to the labor and death camps. This sends every man who has somehow gained possession of more than one shirt to the illicit Exchange Market established in the north-east corner of the camp—the men with shirts to sell want to liquidate them before their value is deflated. Although forbidden by the SS, the Market thrives, functioning like any other economy except that it deals in such goods as soup, bread, tobacco, and shoes, each valued at fluctuating exchange rates based upon a ration of bread. As with all things, the Greek Jews dominate the Market, being the best thieves and the most auspicious merchants.
The development of an entire illicit economy within the camp demonstrates the high level of adaptability that human beings can display in any environment. Though life has been reduced to the basic principles of life and death, many men still find ways to grow their investments and gather additional resources. Although the Germans attempt to dehumanize the Jewish prisoners at every opportunity, the existence of an economic market suggests that, at least for the more enterprising individuals, holding onto some level of humanity is still possible.
Themes
As with standard economics, the prisoners engage in various—often complex—investment schemes, even trading with Polish civilians, investing camp-issued tobacco for a return of bread, eating a portion and then reinvesting their remainder to purchase a shirt which can then be flipped on the market. Prisoners with sharp minds and strong networks of relationships in and outside the camp can see high yields on their investments. Many have their gold fillings pulled from their teeth to use as starting collateral. Some even scam new-arrivals, stricken with such unfamiliar hunger, out of their own gold fillings.
Levi describes the process of “organizing” additional rations and investing in beneficial connections, which becomes one of the primary methods of surviving the camps. Although as described, such organizing requires an astute mind, it becomes one of the primary deciding factors in whether or not a prisoner will last more than a few months, highlighting the need for shrewdness and adaptability for the sake of survival.
Themes
Although contact between Häftlinge and civilians is expressly forbidden and harshly punished, the possibility for financial gain makes it commonplace. Civilians found guilty of interaction with prisoners are themselves sent to the camps for periods of months as punishment, though they are not shorn or tattooed. For them, the labor camp is merely a temporary sentence, not an extended state of existence. Anything that can be stolen and may be useful to other prisoners, to Kapos (who need supplies for their workers) or to civilians is pilfered and introduced to the underground economy. The nurses of Ka-Be are known to be a primary force in the Market’s functioning, selling the shoes and clothes of the dead as well as various chemicals and kits. More than anything, the nurses sell spoons, which cannot be obtained otherwise and which the nurses confiscate from outgoing patients, as if it were their fee.
Levi makes a brief but poignant observation that for German or Polish civilians sent to the camps for fraternizing with Jews, the camps represent only a punishment rather than an identity. They are not shaved or tattooed because the Germans do not wish to strip them of their identities, only to punish them for wrongdoing. This differentiation once again reveals something of the Nazis’ attitude towards the Jews. In their eyes, the Jews are worse than prisoners, worse than criminals whom the Germans allow to maintain their human decency. Rather, the Jews are seen as something to be destroyed and obliterated, undeserving of the very right to exist and be people on the basis of their ethnicity.
Themes
Levi notes that “Theft in Buna, punished by the civil direction, is authorized and encouraged by the SS; theft in the camp, severely repressed by the SS, is considered by the civilian as a normal exchange operation.” With these varying precedents of the ubiquity of theft and its necessity for survival, Levi suggests to the reader that “good and “evil” and “just” and “unjust” mean entirely different things to the outside world than they do to the men of Auschwitz. Such simple, rigid morality simply cannot survive in the Lager.
Levi’s challenge to the reader’s preconceptions is straightforward: the morality of the outside world simply cannot stand within the prison camps. In such an environment, such petty morality has no bearing. This very strongly and directly argues that morality is thus based on one’s circumstances rather than universal rules, dictates, or even religious commandments.
Themes
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