Lager Analysis in Survival in Auschwitz

Short for Arbeitslager, which is German for “labor camp,” Lager is the name the Jewish prisoners in the book most often use to describe Auschwitz. More than simply describing the physical location, the term Lager also embodies the dehumanization and cruelty wrought upon the Jewish prisoners by the Germans in the camp. When, after the Germans have fled, the remaining prisoners begin sharing food like human beings (which never happened while the labor camp was active), Levi remarks that that it signifies that the Lager is dead.

Lager Quotes in Survival in Auschwitz

The Survival in Auschwitz quotes below are all either spoken by Lager or refer to Lager. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Dehumanization and Resistance Theme Icon

And do not think that shoes form a factor of secondary importance in the life of the Lager. Death begins with the shoes; for most of us, they show themselves to be instruments of torture, which after a few hours of marching cause painful sores which become fatally infected.

Related Characters: Primo Levi (speaker), Alberto

Related Symbols: Shoes

Page Number and Citation: 34

Explanation and Analysis:

Precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place once can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.

Related Characters: Primo Levi (speaker), Steinlauf

Page Number and Citation: 41

Explanation and Analysis:

We now invite the reader to contemplate the possible meaning in the Lager of the words “good” and “evil”, “just” and “unjust”; let everybody judge […] how much of our ordinary moral world could survive on this side of the barbed wire.

Related Characters: Primo Levi (speaker)

Related Symbols: Bread

Page Number and Citation: 86

Explanation and Analysis:

We would also like to consider that the Lager was preeminently a gigantic biological and social experiment.

Thousands of individuals, differing in age, condition, origin, language, culture and customs, are enclosed within barbed wire: they live a regular, controlled life which is identical to all and inadequate to all needs, and which is more rigorous than any experimenter could have set up to establish what is essential and what adventitious to the conduct of the human animal in the struggle for life.

Related Characters: Primo Levi (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 87

Explanation and Analysis:

Lager Term Timeline in Survival in Auschwitz

The timeline below shows where the term Lager appears in Survival in Auschwitz. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...that they are in Monowitz, a section of Auschwitz, and will be placed in an Arbeitslager (work camp) that produces rubber with roughly ten thousand other prisoners. There are a variety... (full context)

The arrivals quickly learn the much about the Lager. It is 600 square yards surrounded by electric barbed wire. There are 60 blocks (huts)... (full context)

Adaptability, Chance, and Survival Theme Icon

Within a month, Levi is accustomed to the ways of the Lager, accustomed to chronic pain and hunger, and to thinking neither of the past nor the... (full context)

...they must hold onto ever scrap and remnant of humanity they can to resist the Lager and its campaign “to make us into beasts.” Levi considers this, though is not entirely... (full context)

“Ka-Be is the Lager without its physical discomforts.” With the additional time to rest and without the pains of... (full context)

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... (full context)

The prisoners of the Lager hear a rumor that shirts will soon be issued once again, taken from a new... (full context)

...do to the men of Auschwitz. Such simple, rigid morality simply cannot survive in the Lager. (full context)

Oppression, Power, and Cruelty Theme Icon

...states that thus far he has only described the workings of life itself in the Lager, but now he would like to offer his own analysis. In his eyes, “the Lager... (full context)

...this distinction is more pertinent than good or bad, lucky or unlucky, since in the Lager, each person is “desperately and ferociously alone” and responsible for their own survival, without any... (full context)

...normal society, one might fall somewhere in between the drowned and the saved, in the Lager, there is no middle ground. Drowning is the easiest path to take, since it requires... (full context)

...has gone well but knows that optimism is a foolish thing to possess in the Lager. As he returns across the camp with Alex, Alex disinterestedly wipes a greasy hand on... (full context)

...dead or they might never see each other again, such as things are in the Lager. (full context)

...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... (full context)

...Seven out of 10 prisoners will die before the spring arrives. More ominously still, the Lager is overpopulated by 2,000 prisoners. Now that winter is coming, everyone will be indoors as... (full context)

...prisoner’s minds as they march back. Time loses all meaning beyond the present in the Lager. The camp slang for “never” is “tomorrow morning.” (full context)

...himself that while Kraus must have made an excellent civilian, he will not survive the Lager for long. His coming death is as “logical as a theorem.” Levi did not truly... (full context)

...too weak or too frightened to rise. The three men, however, step out, finding the Lager in ruins from the air raid and from being sufficiently ransacked by the remaining prisoners.... (full context)

...who did the work. To Levi, this marks a new beginning, a symbol that the “Lager was dead,” and that the survivors are beginning to transition from “Häftlinge to men again.”... (full context)

Lager Term Analysis

Lager Quotes in Survival in Auschwitz

Lager Term Timeline in Survival in Auschwitz