Survival in Auschwitz: Chapter 15. Die drei Leute vom Labor Summary & Analysis

The rain of November becomes winter snow, and the workers of the chemical Kommando think only of how wrong they were to hope their lives would improve in a skilled labor unit. So far, none have been chosen for the chemists’ lab and the labor has been harder and more painful than what they came from. Levi and Alberto imagine they will perish this winter. 300 new arrivals from a neighboring camp describe how, although the Russian air raids have ceased, the front is approaching—one can even just barely hear the rumble of it in the distance. In response, the neighboring Lublin prison camp was “liquidated” by the German officials: all the prisoners are either burned alive or gunned down. It seems likely that such a fate will be met in Auschwitz as well.

One morning during roll call, Alex announces that Doktor Pannwitz has finally made his decision: three chemists will be transferred to the laboratory, including Levi. Alberto congratulates him with genuine goodwill—since Levi and Alberto divide all of the resources they each gain evenly between them, a victory for one is a victory for the other. Although the Buna is practically destroyed, the Russians are a mere 50 miles away, and prisoners are being cremated at a rapid pace as neighboring camps are evacuated, rations are reduced, and diphtheria and scarlet fever have broken out in camp. Levi is going to the safety and shelter of a chemistry lab, which is a great fortune. In addition, he will be given new shirt, underpants, and a weekly shave.

The three chemists nervously enter the laboratory for the first time and find that it is overwhelmingly normal and familiar, with tools they recognize and a well-regulated temperature. This is an enormous good fortune, since not only will the escape the threat of winter’s cold, but there is also plenty to steal and barter for food with, meaning they will not die of hunger either. Despite the onset of the Russians, who will arrive any day, Levi and his fellows have plenty of work to do. In the evening he is still a prisoner with everyone else, but during the day he works at a desk with a notebook and a drawer. He is not beaten or threatened, and it does not even feel like work compared to the labor outside.

However, with this newfound tranquility, Levi feels the “pain of remembering, the old ferocious suffering of feeling myself a man again.” Several young German and Polish women work in the laboratory as well, and their visible repulsion to the Häftlinge is painful, not the least because it is deserved—the prisoners smell, their faces are riddled with sores and cuts, and their clothes hang off their gaunt and hairy frames. Levi recounts, “These girls sing, like girls sing in laboratories all over the world, and it makes us deeply unhappy.”

Levi reflects that the past year has passed quickly. One year ago he was free, a man with a family, career, and aspirations. He was a man to whom death, pain, and suffering “seemed extraneous literary things.” Now, Levi thinks, “I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.” He wishes he could explain this to one of the women, but he lacks the capacity in German, and she would either flee or simply not understand.