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Chapter 6. The Work
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
Levi recognizes that human beings are bound to seek meaning and purpose in life. For the Häftlinge of Auschwitz in the midst of winter, that purpose is merely to survive until the spring. This day, the sun breaks through the cloud and the haze, and the men take it as a sign that “the worst is over.” The Greek Jews, the longest-surviving and toughest prisoners “whom the Germans respect and the Poles fear” gather themselves into a circle and sing and chant and stamp their feet together, seeming intoxicated by the songs. The prisoners are both happy and pained, because in the clear of the day they can now see the Auschwitz steeple and Birkenau, where they know that their wives and children were killed.
The Jewish prisoners finding their purpose solely in surviving the winter months demonstrates the degree to which the concentration camp has swallowed every aspect of their lives. Rather than abiding by intellectual philosophies or religious ideals as many would have had in civilian life, survival becomes the only goal with any meaning. Meanwhile, the Greeks’ gathering and singing together once again represents a mark of humanity. Such practices may in fact be why the Greeks are the longest-surviving and most respected prisoners in the camp.
Themes
The Buna, the rubber factory which unites the Jewish Lager as well as several others, is as big as a city, consuming the labor of 40,000 prisoners. 10,000 of them are Jewish. As the sun burns the fog away, the prisoners can see the Buna’s tower stretching into the sky. Although thousands have worked and died to produce the factory, the few survivors will one day learn that not a single ounce of rubber was ever made. Even so, the sun has put the prisoners in good spirits, and they imagine that if not for their gnawing hunger, they might be truly happy in that moment. Seeing a steam shovel at work, they watch with envy as its mechanical mouth chews through the earth and each man dreams of meals eaten in a past life, when scarcity and hunger were not governing principles of life.
Although the prisoners are unaware of it at the time, the factory’s failure to produce any rubber, despite how many human lives it cost to build, once again adds to the pointless suffering inflicted upon the Jewish people. Although slave labor is unfortunately found throughout human history, the Nazis’ use of slave labor is even darker considering it evidently does not a purpose other than to make people suffer. The dreams of past meals reiterate what a powerful and constant presence hunger is the prisoners’ lives, dominating every moment.
Themes
The Kommando’s “organizer” (the man who finds or bargains for additional food, tools, and supplies) has managed to obtain a large amount of civilian soup. Their Kapo, a decent man, is happy to occasionally let their organizer sneak away from his work duties to ferret extra rations, and today it has paid off. Each prisoner will get an additional six pints of hearty soup, distributed throughout the afternoon, and five minutes’ rest from the afternoon’s work in which to eat it. The prisoners return to the camp in high spirits, their hunger sated, with the spring sun shining down on them.
Just as life has been reduced to a simple, grim purpose, happiness comes through the simple circumstances of an extra bit of soup and some brief sunshine. The concentration camp’s ability to strip life down to its barest, most basic elements in this way is common, particularly as the prisoners are reduced over time to mere shells of their former selves.
Themes
