Auschwitz: The Machinery of Destruction - Essay Example

SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ: THE MACHINERY OF DESTRUCTION IN ENVIRONMENT AND PEOPLE, AND THE WAR FOR THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY April 14, Primo Levi lived in the time of the Holocaust, when Auschwitz, specifically Buna, included a concentration camp for slave workers and a gas chamber. His book, If This is a Man, also called Survival in Auschwitz, depicts his life as an Italian Jew prisoner in Auschwitz.1 Lager, Buna in Auschwitz operated inside and outside the Nazi bureaucracy, but still portrayed the dominant anti-Semitic intention for the physical and inward end of the Jewish race. Survival in Auschwitz shows that the machinery of destruction starts with both the systematic and irregular dehumanisation of the Jews through the environment and the brutal, cold treatment from different groups of people, and though many survivors had the ideology of using one another as means to basic survival, some admirably managed to keep their humanity intact by compartmentalising animal and humane instincts. The book effectively demonstrates that, to win against the Nazis, the Jews did not only fight the daily battles for physical survival in Auschwitz, but, more importantly, they fought the war for the survival of their humanity. The temporal setting reflects the inhumane conditions of the Jews through the Nazis who used the environment to maximise the torture they could inflict on them. The transportation to the camp itself was agonising enough to kill many. Without food, water, warmth, and enough physical space, Levi captures the first stage of the machine of destruction- to die by natural means through unnatural uses of environmental conditions.2 He narrates how, in the trains, “…men, women and children [were] pressed together without pity, like cheap merchandise, for a journey towards nothingness, a journey down there, towards the bottom.”3 The inclusion of women and children in the same circumstances indicated how the Nazis perpetuated anti-Semitic ideology that judged the Jews’ inferiority as innate, even women and children were not spared. One of the greatest enemies in the Holocaust was not only the Nazis, but the severe environment. Even in summer, Buna was not better, except it was not so cold. Levi takes pains depicting Buna as “desperately and essentially opaque and gray,” a “negation of beauty,”4 while Carbide Tower was compared to the Tower of Babel because inhabitants had 15 to 20 languages.5 These descriptions prove that the centralised aspect of the annihilation of the Jews included their assignment in unrelenting environments that killed them physically and mentally. Removed from their comfortable civilised stations in life, Levi and the rest of the prisoners learned the harshness of the environment as it reflects the coldness of inhumanity for putting them in utterly horrible circumstances. The unrelenting coldness and the drabness of Lager, however, pale in comparison to the coldness of how the Nazis could treat the Jews and the other groups. The Nazis killed the Jews without second thoughts, beginning with the elderly, women, and children. Levi describes their separation from those who were not considered fit to work because they were sick, old or had young children: “We saw them for a short while as an obscure mass at the other end of the platform; then we saw nothing more.”6 The temporal aspect of living in Auschwitz began in losing their loved ones, especially the most vulnerable. Apart from directly killing the Jews, the Nazis also used the bureaucracy to inflict a systematic dehumanisation system for the destruction of the Jews. “On the Bottom” narrates the removal of everything that makes people different from animals- their rights and freedoms. First, as mentioned, prisoners could not even drink or eat or feel warm during the transportation to Buna. Second, in Buna, no one gave them water to drink and yet there was tap water that tortured them for it was not fit for drinking.7 Third, the Nazis took all basic possessions, including clothing and shoes.8 It did not end there because when they were shaved, even their hair was taken from them.9 Fourth, all prisoners were renamed and baptised through tattooing numbers on their skin. For Levi, he has been reduced from a human being to a “Häftling,” where the high number of his tattoo signified his docility and stupidity to the rest of the prisoners/non-prisoners.10 The baptism stands for how the Nazis owned the Jews until their death, for no one who survived would forget their harrowing slavery experiences. To be a slave means to experience different interactions, which showed arbitrary inhumanity too. While some scholars believe that the Holocaust was fully centralised, Levi provides evidence that it was not. An example is a German soldier who took their money and watches: “This is no order, no regulation: it is obvious that it is a small private initiative of our Charon. The matter stirs us to anger and laughter and brings relief.”11 The Jews were angry because their existence was so irregular that even the rules changed according to the Kapos and Kommandos who managed them. But they were also relieved, probably because with some subjectivity in the Nazi bureaucracy, there was room for positive changes or experiences. Such experiences were scarce, coming from other non-Jews. An example was when Levi was in a line for the infirmary, and when he asked a Polish non-Jew in the line, he ignored him and laughed with the nurse.12 They made fun of his physical condition and the Pole told Levi that he was “finished” and “ready for crematorium.”13 This was only an example of how coldly some non-Jews mistreated the Jews, underlining widespread racial discrimination. To survive in Auschwitz means to survive physically and mentally, and, ultimately, staying human within. Levi describes that not all non-Jews were bad to the Jews, though even Jew-to-Jew interaction was not always trustworthy. Essentially, everyone wanted to survive, and to do so meant not expecting any help from others: “No Sacred Face will help thee here…”14 Levi notes how prisoners learned to keep their possession with them all the time, including the clothes in their knees when washing because everything could be stolen. Furthermore, food was important for survival. Levi depicts the Market, where illegal exchanges of food happen.15 On the one hand, the Market represents the reduction of humanity to basic needs. On the other hand, it reflects the human capacity for survival. Those who survived the best did not do so merely physically, but also mentally and spiritually as well. Levi tells readers about good Jews who managed to be good, such as Resnyk, the Polish who helped him carrying the heavy sleepers in the cold,16 and his best friend Alberto, who had the “advantage of intelligence and intuition,” 17 as well a number of Jewish rabbis who managed to be clean and act with dignity despite their brutal conditions. These examples note how some Jews manage to compartmentalise the good and bad, where they learn to be indifferent to their pain and the pains of others, but to somehow preserve their humanity intact through believing that, if it was their end, they were passive to it, and if not, they would be reunited once more with their families and friends, or, at the minimum, with a second chance to life itself.18 When the Russians came and the camp was liberated, these people managed to go back to ordinary lives. Definitely, the scars of their dehumanisation remain, but they went on living. To survive in Auschwitz is to be relentless in waiting for and stealing scraps of food and anything that helped a prisoner survive each day. There were everyday battles with the environment, the brutal treatment of the Nazis, the indifference of many non-Jew prisoners and non-prisoners, as well as some Jews, and the slow degradation of the human spirit. Levi, nevertheless, knows that to be a human is to be inwardly strong too. He cites a few who showed silent dignity and integrity- they were the ones who won the battle against the ideology of killing the Jewish identity. If this is Auschwitz, Levi demonstrates that, this is how to be a human prisoner- to never let anyone entirely take the humanness inside, the human being that knows the self and sees others as human beings too. Bibliography Levi, Primo. If This is a Man (aka Survival in Auschwitz). New York: Orion Press, 1959. Read More