Survival in Auschwitz (If this is a man) Chapter 17 Summary

Chapter 17 The Story of Ten Days

The Russians keep getting closer to the camp.
In early January, Primo falls sick with scarlet fever and goes back to a special section of Ka-Be.
He gets to stay in the medical clinic for forty days.
After being there for only three days, Primo hears some news from the barber: The next day, everyone's going to be evacuated.
This seems to confirm the rumors in the camp. The Russians are now only sixty miles away.
Even the doctor tells all the patients that the camp will be evacuated the next day. Everyone able to walk will be given shoes, and the sick ones will stay in Ka-Be. Everyone will get a triple ration of bread.
Something seems odd about the doctor—he's much too cheery with this news and seems almost drunk. Oh: He really thinks the Germans are going to kill the prisoners.
Two Hungarian prisoners in the medical clinic with Primo decide to try to get out with the healthy prisoners. They manage to scrounge together some broken down shoes and some rags, and leave.
Primo finds out later that they were killed by the SS after the march began.
The doctor returns and gives Primo a French novel, telling him that he can return it to him after he gets out. This doesn't make Primo happy at all because he knows the doctor realizes that the sick prisoners are sure to be killed.
Alberto is among those to be evacuated. Against the rules, he comes to tell Primo goodbye, but has to do so from outside the window.
That night, all the healthy prisoners—about 20,000 of them—leave during the night.

On the night the prisoners are evacuated, there are still a few SS men around, and they put non-Jews in charge of each hut. Late that night, there's a bomb attack on the camp, and several huts catch fire. The people in Primo's Ka-Be hut refuse to let some prisoners in, because there's just not enough room inside.
So they walk through the freezing cold, trying to find shelter.
The Germans are now nowhere to be seen in camp.

Primo heads out with Arthur and Charles, two French political prisoners in Ka-Be, and they find an appalling sight. There are sick, freezing, emaciated prisoners crawling around everywhere, looking for food, water, and shelter.
The trio finds a stove and some food to take back to their hut.
They divide up among themselves the tasks of getting the stove started and cooking the food.
Once they get the stove going and the hut is warmer, several other prisoners give them some bread for the work they have done.
Even though there's the danger of getting sick, because so many sick people are all crowded in the room with the stove, no one really thinks about this.
Instead, they feel like they've accomplished something.

People are fighting over what little food remains in the camp. Primo and his friends have to chip ice away from a pile of frozen cabbages and turnips. But, there's a ton of these—they carry away over 100 pounds and leave much more behind.
Primo is able to scavenge a car battery, and their hut ends up with electricity that night.
That night, groups of Germans flee down the road, some on bicycles, some in cars, some in tanks, and some on horseback.

The guys in Primo's hut make a giant pot of soup out of the cabbages and turnips, but sanitation is a problem, since all the toilets are overflowing and there's excrement everywhere because of the sick people.
One guy, a tailor by trade, exchanges his services for some soup. The next day, Primo and his friends have some warm clothes made out of blankets.
Everyone can hear the approaching fighting, and Primo tells the men in his hut that they need to start thinking about going home now. It looks like they're going to make it.
He cautions everyone to not share their bowls or spoons, and to use dirty utensils, instead of risking washing them in contaminated water.

Primo and Charles explore the SS portion of the camp, and find lots of luxuries: frozen soup, beer, down blankets, booze, and medicine.
Others had the same idea, and had taken over one of the SS huts. Unfortunately, a group of SS returned for some reason and killed them all before departing again.
There are now frozen bodies everywhere: in the huts and piled up in trenches. No one can dig graves because the ground is frozen solid.
In the medical hut next door to Primo's, the situation has become really bad. This is where the dysentery patients are staying, and the floor is literally covered with frozen excrement.
Primo can hear two Italian patients through the wall, and he finally breaks down and takes them some water and soup.
A bit later that night, a Dutch prisoner in Primo's hut gets really sick, and soils his bed and the floor. Charles kindly cleans the man up, cutting the filth-covered areas from his mattress, and returning him to bed.

The prisoners find a source of potatoes outside the barbed wire fence of the camp. Now no one's really in danger of dying from hunger.
Sertelet, one of Primo's housemates in the medical hut, is sick with diphtheria, and can't eat. But when Primo goes to a Hungarian doctor and mentions diphtheria, he's turned away.

It occurs to the prisoners that if they can get through the hole in the fence to get potatoes, they can escape. No one's there to stop them. The destruction and death all around prevents them from convincing themselves that it's true.
Despite the food, people continue to die from illness. The pile of bodies outside of Ka-Be gets bigger and bigger.
Some guys from Hut 14 explore the English POW camp, and find lots of useful stuff: clothing, food, and alcohol. That night, Primo and his friends can hear them singing, but no one has the strength to make the trek out to the English camp.
Luckily, though, Hut 14 agrees to exchange some of the lard and flour they found for some of the candles that the men in Primo's hut have made.

One of Primo's bunkmates, Sómogyi, is close to dying. He gasps for breath and repeats over and over, "Jawohl." Primo wishes he would pick a different word.
Even though they fear the Russians won't come, and they're afraid of hoping too much, Primo, Charles and Arthur talk among themselves of their lives outside the camp.

Things continue to become more and more uncivilized in the camp, with death all around.
Sómogyi finally dies, and he falls to the ground from his bunk.
Primo and his friends cannot carry his body out of the hut, so they just go back to sleep

The next morning, they leave the body in the hut while they eat and clean up.
As they are carrying Sómogyi's body out, the Russian soldiers arrive.
Of the eleven men in Primo's Ka-Be hut, Sómogyi was the only one to die in the past ten days. Five more died in the following weeks in the Russian hospital that was set up in Auschwitz.
The remaining five, including Primo, Charles, and Arthur, survive and return home. Primo has exchanged letters with Charles and plans to visit him one day.