Moral Relativity Theme Analysis

Levi, the author and a former prisoner at Auschwitz labor camp, describes himself doing things to survive which may have seemed unconscionable to him in his former civilian life. However, the cruelty of life in Auschwitz and the relentless demands of survival make actions that may have seemed morally reprehensible in the outside world commonplace in the Lager, suggesting that morality is relative, defined by circumstances rather than universal dictates.

The Jewish prisoners in the Lager are ordinary men, initially accustomed to the morality of civilized society, setting the basis from which their morality will be reshaped. Although there are non-Jewish political prisoners in Auschwitz as well—who live quite different and often separated lives in the Lager—the Jewish prisoners are mostly everyday people: businessman, tradesmen, rabbis, and family men. As such, when they enter the camp, their moral compass is aligned with general society’s. Actions such as theft, betrayal, manipulation, or deceit seem immoral, since they were condemnable in regular society. This pre-existing sense of morality seems to be amplified by the Jews’ religious heritage. Although Levi himself does not speak Yiddish or participate much in Jewish culture, many of his fellow inmates are rabbis and religious teachers who keep their minds sharp by discussing the scriptures. This suggests that in their lives before Auschwitz, they would have been involved not only in the teaching of scripture but of the Ten Commandments and religious ethics. The general morality of the prisoners before their lives in Auschwitz, based on the dictates of their religion and the guiding principles of society, establishes the baseline from which Levi will describe their gradual moral deviation. The Jewish prisoners of the Lager are not hardened criminals, but good, ordinary men, which makes their moral development all the more significant.

Due to the life-and-death demands of hunger and self-preservation, actions that once seemed unconscionable or unjustifiable become commonplace in the prisoners’ lives, demonstrating how morality is defined by one’s circumstances, rather than by permanent rules. The constant scarcity of resources makes theft among prisoners entirely commonplace, an accepted practice of the Lager. Levi remarks, “If I find a spoon lying around, a piece of string, a button which I can acquire without danger of punishment, I pocket them and consider them mine by full right.” This suggests that beyond theft being merely understandable, in the life of the Lager, an action that once seemed immoral now seems entirely ethical: “Theft in camp, repressed by the SS, is considered by the civilians as a normal exchange operation.” This is reinforced by the fact that prisoners are careful never to set their few possessions down, but carry them everywhere, recognizing that to set an item down is to sacrifice it to reasonable theft.  The Kapos—the prisoners who have been made overseers of the Kommandos, groups of prison laborers—inevitably beat their workers, since that is their job. While some do so malevolently, Levi describes how many beat their subjects “almost lovingly, accompanying the blows with exhortations, as cart-drivers do with willing horses,” knowing that the external pain will help to distract the laborers from their own fatigue and help them push through the day’s work. This suggests that even physical abuse, in specific circumstances, can go from a morally detestable action to an oddly benevolent one, complicating the notion of morality as a fixed system.

Recognizing the fact that what seems unconscionable in general society seemed commonplace and justifiable in camp, Levi challenges the reader to “contemplate the possible meaning in the Lager of the words ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘just’ and ‘unjust,’” and to consider “how much of our ordinary moral world could survive on this side of the barbed wire.” The adjusted morality of the camp and Levi’s open challenge to the reader strongly argue that morality is relative, defined by one’s circumstances rather than any universal set of dictates or rules. Curiously, Levi even seems to extend this circumstantial morality to his captors, which, while not excusing them for their participation in a great evil, does help himself and the reader to understand how such events happen. Levi’s entire account of Auschwitz is a testament to the cruelty and evil of the Third Reich. Even so, he observes that such evils seem to not be the will of each individual German, but the sweep of their culture and their period in history. Levi observes, “They build, they fight, they command, they organize and they kill. What else could they do? They are Germans. This way of behavior is not meditated and deliberate, but follows from their nature and from the destiny they have chosen.”  Although Levi makes no attempt to absolve them of their guilt, he does suggest that, just as the prisoners’ morality has been distorted by the Lager, so too the individual Germans’ sense of morality has been warped by the events surrounding them. Though it does not negate the evil, Levi’s observations of circumstantial morality do help to explain how an entire nation could be caught up in such a momentous evil.

Watching a newly-arrived young man who maintains his old morality, Levi remarks, “What a good boy [he] must have been as a civilian; he will not survive very long here.” Being morally good, then, is inverted as a negative trait within the ruthless context of the Lager. Auschwitz’s brutal environment forces the prisoners to reorient their sense of morality in order to survive, thus arguing that morality itself is relative to one’s circumstances.