Previous
Chapter 15. Die drei Leute vom Labor
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
Christmas is approaching, and although Alberto and Levi work separately now, they still march back to the camps together each day. Their fortunes have continued to rise—Lorenzo now smuggles them several pints of soup each day, which they carry back in a zinc pot that they commissioned a tin-smith to make for them. The possession of such an item raises their social standing amongst the Häftlinge as keen organizers, and Elias, Alfred L., and even Henri constantly interact with them. On top of the soup, Alberto and Levi have both undertaken several schemes to smuggle, thieve, and invest their newfound capital and multiply their returns.
In terms of the life of a prisoner, Levi and Alberto are doing quite well for themselves, using their wits and resources to create wealth, again a notably human practice. Their pride in their own success seems reasonable and well-founded since they have managed to do things that many others could not and they are growing healthier and stronger. What will soon happen, though, suggests that Levi believes their pride to be entirely misplaced.
Themes
As Alberto and Levi are walking back to camp, having just received their daily pot of soup from Lorenzo, the prisoners are gathered into the square. Both men think it must be a roll call, but quickly realize it is in fact an execution. Although such a sight is not unusual—with men often hung for petty crimes—what is unusual is that the prisoner to be hung is an actual resistor, a fighter who played some role in the detonation of one of Birkenau’s crematoriums. Somehow, the men of Birkenau, aided by this man in front of Alberto and Levi, had “found in themselves the strength to act, to mature the fruits of their hatred.”
The contrast between Alberto and Levi’s work to survive—which, in such an environment, arguably constitutes its own form of resistance—and this true revolutionary’s work is painfully clear. Although Alberto and Levi resist the Germans’ attempts to dehumanize and destroy them, their work is ultimately only for themselves. Through the contrast, Levi seems to condemn their own selfishness and weakness in their inability to truly fight their oppressors.
Themes
The gathering of prisoners is silent as an SS official makes a long speech in harsh, undiscernible German. Once he has said his piece, the condemned man cries out, “Comrades, I am the last one!” Though Levi is ashamed to admit it, no one stirs at the final heroic proclamation. The man hangs and the Jewish prisoners are forced to walk in procession past his wriggling, swaying corpse. As Levi does so, he thinks that the Russians ought to arrive now, for the last man of any strength or caliber among them is hanging from the gallows. The Germans have finally destroyed the Jewish people. In the block, Alberto and Levi cannot look each other in the eye, for they are painfully aware that although they are masterful organizers, they are still weak and defeated men. Levi admits, “We satisfied the daily ragings of hunger, and now we are oppressed by shame.”
It is strange that Levi orients so much of his story around the struggle to maintain one’s own humanity in the midst of their survival struggle, and yet in this chapter seems to condemn it as insignificant or even infantile. Although Levi continues in his struggle for survival and his quest to maintain his own humanity, his shame that he never truly fought colors the perception of the entire story. While the reader is not likely to view Levi as any less brave or heroic for surviving one of modern history’s most grotesque evils, the author himself seems to argue that although some prisoners were able to maintain their individual humanity, the Nazis did succeed in crushing their spirit.
Themes
