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Chapter 3. Initiation
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 days blur together and everything seems hostile, even the clouds in the sky. Levi is paired for work with a young man whom everyone calls Null Achtzehn (German for “018”) since he does not seem alive enough to even be called by his name. Null Achtzehn has lost all sense of humanness, even the ability to know when he must cease straining or he will kill himself with exhaustion. He is, essentially, a drone. As Levi and Null Achtzehn are carrying steel pieces of a railroad and Levi is daydreaming about stowing away on a supply wagon, Null Achtzehn blankly drops his end of the load and it falls on Levi’s foot, cutting a gash across the back of his heel.
Null Achtzehn represents the final end to which the Germans hope to push all Jews within the camp—unthinking, unfeeling, and beast-like. This is exemplified by the fact that no one seems to know Null Achtzehn’s name. Since he has become precisely what the Nazis want him to become, even his fellow prisoners will accept calling him by the number the Nazis have given him. In this way, Null Achtzehn is a foil for Steinlauf in “Initiation,” who prides himself on maintaining his humanity at all costs.
Themes
The Kapo arrives and strikes the workers for the disruption, though the blows do not hurt compared to the pain in Levi’s foot. He is put on an easier work detail for the rest of the day and two other prisoners help him painfully make the march back to camp at the day’s end. After evening ration, Levi goes to Krankenbau, or Ka-Be, the infirmary. Only the “economically useful Jews” are considered for treatment at all, and even of those, if someone cannot recover within two weeks, they are most often sent to the gas chambers.
Levi’s admission into Ka-Be, even to be considered, indicates that the camp administrators believe that he is “economically useful” and has some future utility other than mere physical labor. Although it will take a long time for this to play out, this status as an “economically useful” prisoner will be one of a number of factors that contribute to his survival.
Themes
Since it is forbidden to wear shoes in the infirmary, Levi must stand barefoot in the mud while he waits his turn to be seen. The foot is quickly inspected, and it is decided that Levi will have to return tomorrow, during the work day. This makes it a “good wound,” since it does not seem overly serious but may mean a small reprieve from labor. The following morning during roll call, Levi is separated from the others and made to wait with those scheduled to be seen in Ka-Be. The waiting prisoners are made to strip naked, stand in the cold for inspection, take a shower, stand naked in the cold again, take another shower, and again wait in the cold. Levi observes that “We have been on our feet for ten hours and naked for six.”
Once again, the cruel and arbitrary system of admission into Ka-Be—showering twice, standing naked in the cold for hours, and so on—reiterates the camp practice of inflicting suffering on the Jewish prisoners as an end in itself, further building upon the theme of dehumanization. The arbitrary, counter-intuitive rules of entry, such as having ill prisoners stand barefoot in the cold mud while they wait to be seen, suggests that the Germans are far more interested in maintaining their established systems than caring for the health or wellbeing of the Jewish patients.
Themes
Levi is given a quick second examination, the doctor painfully poking at his bloodied, swelling foot, and then he is left in a waiting room with a huge Polish prisoner. The Pole sees Levi’s number and recognizes that he is an Italian Jew and laughs at him, since the Italian Jews are known to be recent arrivals and worthless workers, intellectuals ill-suited to life in the camp. The Pole tells him in “near-German” that he will be sent to the crematorium.
The Pole’s belittling of Levi suggests that the racial hierarchy held by the Germans is also shared, to some degree, by other non-Jewish prisoners in the camp as well. This makes sense, in a cruel way, since by having another race lower than themselves in the hierarchy of the camp, their own suffering will be lessened to some degree.
Themes
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Several hours later, Levi is processed by another official who takes down his name and his civilian profession, and Levi is sent with the other inpatients to another dormitory. Levi is one of the few to have his own bunk to himself, and he falls into a deep sleep. Life in Ka-Be is easy; they follow the same schedule as the working prisoners, but rather than work, they sleep the intermittent hours away in their bunks. However, they can still hear the drums of the musicians playing the marching rhythm in the central square as the laborers march out to work and return as exhausted husks of men.
It is ironic that the camp infirmary, full of sick or wounded people, represents a sort of safe shelter. Although it might seem like a miserable place, in reality it guards prisoners from the other dangers of the camp: the harsh cold and backbreaking labor. This, along with many other observations later made, demonstrates the manner in which life in the camp often seems to be an inversion of the way life works in the outside world.
Themes
One day Levi asks the men in the neighboring bunk about the selections and the crematorium, which everyone in camp alludes to but no one speaks directly of. The following day, a German officer makes an inspection of the Ka-Be inpatients, selecting one of Levi’s neighbors among the group to be sent to die. Those going to die do so silently, without anger, and no one speaks to them or bids farewell. “Without display or anger, massacre moves through the huts of Ka-Be every day, touching here or there.”
For those selected, their silent journey to death without any conflict, grief, or even comfort offered by their comrades, again represents another form of dehumanization. Just as the Jews were not allowed the chance to grieve before they were loaded onto the trains in Italy, so too the prevalence of death in the camp has taken away their ability to reckon with their own passing or even feel the gravity of it.
Themes
“Ka-Be is the Lager without its physical discomforts.” With the additional time to rest and without the pains of labor or cold to drive all thought from one’s mind, the residents of Ka-Be have the painful opportunity to again reflect on their lot and what they have become. They dwell on how fragile their sense of self is (even more so than their bodies are) and the pain of missing home. They have become mindless slaves who are dying in spirit before their bodies have the chance to break.
The Jewish prisoners’ dehumanization represents an existential death. When the Germans are successful in crushing their human spirit, their sense of self dies long before their bodies. This campaign to destroy men’s spirits while keeping their bodies for labor is particularly horrific, demonstrating Nazis’ great evil. In a sense, this strategy is crueler than killing a man right away but allowing him to retain his humanity until the end.
Themes
