Racial Hierarchy Theme Analysis

The Holocaust was motivated, among other things, by the belief that ethnic Germans were a master race, destined to wipe out all inferior races and create a superior breed of human beings. Although the Third Reich and its crusade to wipe out the Jewish people is founded on the belief of a racial hierarchy, Levi, the author and a prisoner at Auschwitz labor camp, observes the various ethnic groups within the camp and comes to the conclusion that although each has its distinctive characteristics, no such hierarchy of value truly exists.

The camp administrators go out of their way to assert their own superiority and the inferiority of the Jews, demonstrating their own convictions that the German race is superior in every way. Within Auschwitz, any individual who is a not Jewish, regardless of whether they are a prisoner, Kapo, or camp administrator, is considered to be inherently more valuable than any Jewish person. Levi observes, “[The Jewish people] are the slaves of the slaves, whom all can give orders to,” even if they are other non-Jewish prisoners. This is a blatant assertion of the Germans’ belief that the Jewish people are the lowest, most inferior group on earth. On the other end of the spectrum, regardless of how inept or stupid a man may be, any “Aryan” (the Reich’s name for the supposed “master race”) is given at least some position of authority within the camp—even if he is a political prisoner. This demonstrates the German belief in a rigid racial hierarchy that transcends individual merit. Supported by the inherently racist structure of the Lager, the camp administrators often deride the Jewish prisoners as weak, sub-human, and dirty, ignoring the fact that it was their own cruel treatment that made the prisoners so. In this way, the German belief in their own racial superiority becomes self-fulfilling: they see it modeled in the fact that they are mostly healthy and powerful, while their Jewish subjects are weak, dirty, and powerless, thus justifying further grotesque treatment in the minds of the Germans.

Rather than arguing that all people are essentially the same, Levi recognizes distinctions between the varying ethnic backgrounds of the prisoners, suggesting that there are, indeed, some characteristic differences between ethnic groups. The Greek Jewish people, who have been in the camp longer than most, are known to be “pitiless opponents in the struggle for life” and so “tenacious, thieving, wise, ferocious and united” that even the Germans respect them; contrarily, the Italian Jewish people are widely believed—even by Levi—to be well-educated and well-suited to the outside world, but poor at surviving the camps or adapting themselves to its manual labor and harsh living. The non-Jewish Poles are regarded as hardy and powerfully-built, apt for surviving the camps and enduring hardship, suggesting that there are, to a degree, distinctions between ethnic groups. However, although Levi makes such observations, he never imposes them as a measure of value, nor does he assume that such descriptors must automatically apply to every individual or apply a racial hierarchy as the Germans do.

The widely varying quality and utility of individuals of all races ultimately denies that any hierarchy of value can truly exist between them. The obvious error of the Germans’ racial hierarchy is most apparent when Levi and several other intelligent, well-educated Jews are assigned to the Chemical Kommando, a unit of Jewish prisoners intended to work as chemists. Although it is a technical unit and the prisoners expect that their Kapo will himself be a chemist, they are instead placed under the command of Alex, a German “professional delinquent” of limited stature and intelligence. Despite the German insistence that any Aryan is superior to any Jew, the brash idiocy of Alex compared with the intelligence of his Jewish underlings powerfully contradicts that belief, suggesting instead that there is no truth at all to the German’s racial hierarchy. Rather than commit the same error as the Germans and believe that all members of another race are inherently evil or cruel, Levi and his fellow Jewish prisoners recognize that loathsome Germans such as Alex must be exceptionally rare. Levi recalls that they “refuse to believe that the squalid human specimens whom we saw at work were an average example, not of Germans in general, but even of German prisoners in particular.” It is telling that the Jewish prisoners recognize such a concept as racial hierarchy to be so erroneous that, even though the only Germans they know are wretched and vile, they refuse to participate in it themselves, again firmly arguing that such a belief system that declares any race better or worse than another is entirely false.

Contrary to what the Germans believe about racial superiority or inferiority, Levi and his fellow Jewish prisoners observe that a racial hierarchy is inherently absurd and enables such dangerous and malevolent ideas as those that ultimately gave way to the Holocaust.