Analysis of Levis Survival in Survival in Auschwitz by Levi Primo - Term Paper Example

The death camp where Levi was sent as a 25 year old boy was located in Monowitz-Buna, in Germany. This camp is described to be a forced labor camp. The Buna camp is named after its product, which is the manufactured rubber it produces. As Schlome describes, the camp is a lager, which is a square measuring about six hundred yards in length. The camp is intensely fenced with two-razor wire enclosures with the inner one being electrified. With this, there was no escape route apart from “the only exit….

by way of the chimney”. Within it were structures where inmates were packed and placed in filthy conditions as indicated when other inmates attempt to explain through “it's not a Serchio-bathing party”. These include insufficient food, a filthy environment, without comfort and harsh working conditions. They were known as blocks and were basically comprised of six wooden huts each. Numerous, complex and non-sensible rules such as “there is no why here”, guided the operation within the camps.

Inmates were subjected to beatings or worse actions if they failed to comply with the rules. Relevance of the Title Instead of referring to the book as life in Auschwitz or a prisoner in Auschwitz, Levi called his book survival in Auschwitz because it mainly gives the encounters of the hardships that Levi who, as a prisoner of the camp, had to undergo. It is the unexpected circumstances that protect Levi from death. Levi describes that once he entered the camp, he was a “demolition of a man” (26) as he just awaited his death.

Although his physical being was destroyed his inner spirit remained strong. With these, the efforts he made to survive the challenges are highlighted. Since the prisoners were not treated like humans, there lacked an “ordinary moral world” (86) in the camp forcing the inmates to adopt an animal like behavior to survive. His survival is a vital component as it shows the victory of those prisoners who left the camp alive. It is a great achievement in this account since only twenty people left Auschwitz alive out of the six hundred and fifty Jews who had been shipped together with Levi (16).

Particularly, most of the accounts of activities given by Levi do not comprise normal life, but the effort to survive in the camp. While those who fell ill in the camp were murdered, Levi falls ill when the camp has been liberated. Thus, instead of being killed he is abandoned leading to his recovery and escape. It is thus the sequence of these activities that enable Levi and his fellow inmates to leave the camp alive. They also include some unplanned events such as when he suffered from scarlet fever, which helped him escape the march into the winter where several inmates died of low temperatures and summary executions.

His illness thus saved him from his fate (151). Efforts made by Levi Towards Survival Although Levi principally survived in the camp in 1944 solely because the Nazi had suspended the full effort of genocide and preferred to enforce labor of the convicts, he still made his own efforts to survive. The author had to avoid thoughts of the misfortunes such as hunger and cold in order to stay alive in the camp (17). It also needed the orientation and the application of skills obtained from his education to enhance his knowledge of the German language.

He also needed to use additional