Survival In Auschwitz Sparknotes

On December 13, 1943, a twenty four year old, Jewish-Italian man’s life was changed forever. This Jewish-Italian man’s name is Primo Levi. Survival In Auschwitz, a book written by Primo Levi, portrays the horrific experience Levi lived through. Levi was captured by the Fascist Militia who forced Levi, along with hundreds of others, into wagons where they would be transported to a holding camp until they were taken to Auschwitz. There were 12 wagons that would take all of the 650 captured men to the camp of Auschwitz in Poland. Immediately upon their arrival to the camp, they were asked simple questions, such as “healthy or ill?’. Depending on the response they would give, they would be sent in two different directions. The book describes this

“This is hell. A huge empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen”. (page 16). Not only are the people who were captured referred to as prisoners, but they are treated as if they are just a number. The Nazi’s treated Levi, along with thousands of others, in such an inhumane way. Levi goes into graphic detail throughout his book to allow his readers to almost visualize the camp as if they were there with him. With his quote above, he describes Auschwitz as to what he envisioned hell would be like. They have no water, very thin soup with maybe a scrap of potato if they are lucky. The Nazi’s took everything they have once loved away from them, and forced them into a whole new world. This camp is filled with “prisoners” wearing striped clothing and shoes that do not fit their feet, creating horrific blisters and causing infections on their feet, which only worsened when they would work. Their working days were long and brutal. In the winter time, a working day was 8am to 12 am and 12:30 pm to 4pm. In the summer, the working days were from 6:30 am to 12 pm and 1 pm to 6 pm. “Such will be our life. Every day, according to the established rhythm,

In order for our world to be properly informed on historical events, reading people’s personal experiences of events they lived through creates a whole new perspective and insight as to the actual occurrences that took place at that time in history. We can turn to history textbooks but the textbooks do not provide the true reality of what was experienced by the people living during that period. Because this time period is very traumatic and a horrific historical event, you can read facts that cover much of what happened and get an idea of the timeline of the Holocaust. However reading Levi’s own personal experiences help to make the reader feel what was actually occurring and not just a textbook of facts. In my Composition II class first semester, we were told to research archives, and shockingly enough, I did my archive paper over the Holocaust. I was able to perceive a whole new understanding of this historical event through reading stories of survivors. I read their journals written during the Holocaust and was able to illustrate the event more throughrougly through the graphic stories they would reveal in their writings. Through my secondary scholarly source, I came across a an article by Erin Denton which stated, “When Primo Levi fell to his death on April 11, 1987, many believed that he had finally yielded to the horrors of Auschwitz (Gambetta, 1999).” This section spoke to me with how