Previous
Chapter 11. The Canto of Ulysses
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
Throughout the spring of 1944, so many Hungarians enter Auschwitz that Hungarian becomes the second most common language at the camp, after Yiddish. By August, those who entered with Levi five months prior are considered the “old hands of the camp.” The chemist examination has not yet resulted in anything, though that is no great surprise. News spreads through the camp of a coming “Russian offensive” of the French at Normandy and an attempted assassination of Hitler, resulting in powerful but brief bursts of hope among the Häftlinge.
The fact that the Italian Jews are considered “old hands” after only five months underscores just how short the average lifespan of a Jewish prisoner is. Such hope amongst the prisoners must certainly be even more potently felt, since they are living in such a hopeless time and place, though the fact that such hope is brief suggests that they quickly return to their natural, deadened state.
Themes
That same month, aerial bombardments begin striking the camp. The Buna, rather than producing rubber, puts all its labor into reconstructing itself after each successive air raid. Life becomes chaotic and the German civilians grow frantic and furious, knowing that their long-held power and domination is threatened by the onset of the Russian army. Life becomes more difficult for the Jewish Häftlinge as they are denied entry into the air raid shelters and wait out each attack unprotected, but most are too tired to care. It is one more misery on top of every other.
The panic of the German civilians at the idea of losing their own power to oppress others is telling. They fear losing their dominance, since another party will soon become dominant over them, suggesting that they know full-well how morally wrong their treatment of the Jewish people has been from the start. Even so, their ill treatment of the Jewish prisoners does not become lessened in any way.
Themes
During this time, Levi meets an Italian citizen named Lorenzo who begins providing him extra food each day. He also gives him a patched vest, and even sends a postcard to Italy on Levi’s behalf and delivers him the reply. There is no financial transaction or gain for Lorenzo—he takes the risk merely out of human decency. Levi thus joins the ranks of the organizers and guards the name and nature of his contact as jealously as a lover, as all prisoners do. Levi credits much of his survival to Lorenzo, though he cannot say why he should have such fortune rather than any other prisoner. Although most civilians treat the prisoners as untouchable, Lorenzo’s expression of human decency reaffirms to Levi that the world exists beyond the walls of the Lager, and that there is goodness in it: “Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.”
Lorenzo, like Resnyk, provides an uncommon glimpse of humanity amidst the chaos and cruelty of the concentration camps. In Levi’s journey of survival and struggle to maintain his own humanity, Lorenzo plays a critical role by simply treating him as a human being, deserving of sympathy and compassion. As generous as Lorenzo is, the fact that such generosity seems so uncommon casts a dark shadow over the rest of the human beings, particularly the free civilians, present in and around Auschwitz, who witness such suffering and such needs and yet ignore them.
Themes
