Survival in Auschwitz
I have just finished Primo Levi's memoir of his year in the notorious death camp (or as he calls it, the "Lager"). Unlike my usual encounters with the Holocaust, which have been primarily visual (film, photographs), I do not feel that overwhelming wave of horror, that shame of our species, that fear and revulsion. Instead of crushing emotion, I feel hollow, without real thought or imagination - as if someone had come along and swept out all the clutter, or silenced a clamoring crowd. I do not know how to react to this tale of Sig.Levi's, which he tells with a careful dignity that is both inspiring and unnerving.
I did have initial reactions to the opening of the story. The questions were the usual suspects. Would I have rallied against the Nazis? Would I have informed on my neighbor? Would I have taken in an escapee? Would I have pled the cause in other nations? And then, would I have escaped or survived? Most of these hypotheticals, in which one's judges one's own moral conviction and courage in a historical context are ridiculous. I cannot know myself in that way as I have experienced nothing remotely similar to the Final Solution. Furthermore, the questions form an escapist's arsenal in his/her battle against self-damnation. "As there is no such situation," I say in my deep recesses, "I clearly cannot judge myself." But there are situations of a different kind that demand my attention and action, and I might make a small difference if I set myself to those tasks rather than wondering what I would do if the world fell apart (although I know all the chicken littles in the US think that it already has, as if someone patting them down at the airport means that they must live in fear and suspicion the rest of their days). These questions, to which I'm accustomed, fell away as the book progressed.
Then I conducted the next rigorous internal interrogation (which never results in taking action by the way) about how I can live with my consumerism, my outlandish materialism, my petty complaints, my generous store of self-pity when there has been such monstrous suffering. When there currently is so much monstrous suffering. Am I not like the German people in 1939, standing by while the world becomes an ever-more dangerous and inhumane place? In these inquiries, I am never courageous enough to challenge the status quo, to answer the problems I observe in my home land every day. I somehow feel responsible for the planet's yawning expanse of despair and pain. "Perhaps," I say to myself, "if you lived less well, if you worked tirelessly for an NGO, or better yet, if you to had a share in their plight, you would be a better person (and therefore be relieved of guilt)."
Among the many lessons of "Survival in Auschwitz," the most surprising was the admonition to observe and cherish always the fruits of freedom. At one point in the retelling, Levi says, "If from inside the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men it would have been this: take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here." It has occured to me that I am incessantly disappointed with the bounty of my life because I have never taken notice, always taken for granted my limitless freedom and for the most part, good fortune. My classes in Judaism often instructed that rituals devoted to appreciation of every activity, every normal moment of one's life have some interaction with happiness. I have only just now understood begun to understand those teachings.
During the narrative, Levi emphasizes the greatest crime perpetrated on the men who survived Auschwitz was the diminution or complete robbery of their humanity. He indicates that some found solace and redemption in mundane but civilized behaviors, like polishing their shoes or cleaning their faces, even though such observances never obtained the ordinary objective. During his initiation to the camp, another inmate advises, "...that precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive...and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization." And though Levi says near the conclusion of the book, "We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around us and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat," I believe that Levi survived the camps because he kept the scaffolding of civilization in place around him. More importantly, he was able to recount the silent massacre of a million stories like his own, which feat he would not have accomplished had he lost himself as a man.
The real weight of the book is in the particular way in which Levi bears witness. Through Levi I have journeyed into the extermination camps as a victim rather than an observer. In doing so, Levi has allowed me to share his burden and relieve mine. I have lived his story in a small way and thereby achieved his purpose in writing. I will not forget the forgotten. By remembering vicariously, I help to undo the temporary victory of The Lager - I retake the souls of men extinguished while they were living.
I did have initial reactions to the opening of the story. The questions were the usual suspects. Would I have rallied against the Nazis? Would I have informed on my neighbor? Would I have taken in an escapee? Would I have pled the cause in other nations? And then, would I have escaped or survived? Most of these hypotheticals, in which one's judges one's own moral conviction and courage in a historical context are ridiculous. I cannot know myself in that way as I have experienced nothing remotely similar to the Final Solution. Furthermore, the questions form an escapist's arsenal in his/her battle against self-damnation. "As there is no such situation," I say in my deep recesses, "I clearly cannot judge myself." But there are situations of a different kind that demand my attention and action, and I might make a small difference if I set myself to those tasks rather than wondering what I would do if the world fell apart (although I know all the chicken littles in the US think that it already has, as if someone patting them down at the airport means that they must live in fear and suspicion the rest of their days). These questions, to which I'm accustomed, fell away as the book progressed.
Then I conducted the next rigorous internal interrogation (which never results in taking action by the way) about how I can live with my consumerism, my outlandish materialism, my petty complaints, my generous store of self-pity when there has been such monstrous suffering. When there currently is so much monstrous suffering. Am I not like the German people in 1939, standing by while the world becomes an ever-more dangerous and inhumane place? In these inquiries, I am never courageous enough to challenge the status quo, to answer the problems I observe in my home land every day. I somehow feel responsible for the planet's yawning expanse of despair and pain. "Perhaps," I say to myself, "if you lived less well, if you worked tirelessly for an NGO, or better yet, if you to had a share in their plight, you would be a better person (and therefore be relieved of guilt)."
Among the many lessons of "Survival in Auschwitz," the most surprising was the admonition to observe and cherish always the fruits of freedom. At one point in the retelling, Levi says, "If from inside the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men it would have been this: take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here." It has occured to me that I am incessantly disappointed with the bounty of my life because I have never taken notice, always taken for granted my limitless freedom and for the most part, good fortune. My classes in Judaism often instructed that rituals devoted to appreciation of every activity, every normal moment of one's life have some interaction with happiness. I have only just now understood begun to understand those teachings.
During the narrative, Levi emphasizes the greatest crime perpetrated on the men who survived Auschwitz was the diminution or complete robbery of their humanity. He indicates that some found solace and redemption in mundane but civilized behaviors, like polishing their shoes or cleaning their faces, even though such observances never obtained the ordinary objective. During his initiation to the camp, another inmate advises, "...that precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive...and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization." And though Levi says near the conclusion of the book, "We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around us and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat," I believe that Levi survived the camps because he kept the scaffolding of civilization in place around him. More importantly, he was able to recount the silent massacre of a million stories like his own, which feat he would not have accomplished had he lost himself as a man.
The real weight of the book is in the particular way in which Levi bears witness. Through Levi I have journeyed into the extermination camps as a victim rather than an observer. In doing so, Levi has allowed me to share his burden and relieve mine. I have lived his story in a small way and thereby achieved his purpose in writing. I will not forget the forgotten. By remembering vicariously, I help to undo the temporary victory of The Lager - I retake the souls of men extinguished while they were living.
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