This Side of Good and Evil
- The prisoners have been waiting for a long time for the "ceremony of the change of underclothes" (8.1). Um...what?
- This delay is understood by the prisoners in a couple of different ways: 1.) They're going to be liberated soon, since the war front is getting closer; and 2.) They're going to die soon, and therefore won't need clean underclothes.
- Neither of these things happen, and the underwear ceremony takes place.
- The prison directors arrange this when the prisoners don't expect it. That's so the prisoners don't try to take strips of cloth from their garments, which is the only way they can get small pieces of cloth for blowing their noses or padding their shoes.
- Prisoners with extra shirts hurry off to the Exchange Market, the underground prison market, to sell their shirts for a good price (bread or soup) before the market is flooded with the new shirts and the "prices" for used shirts go down.
- There's also a system of exchange with civilians, which can land prisoners into huge trouble if they're caught.
- Plus, the civilians will also get in trouble for this type of activity. There's a whole section of Auschwitz set aside for non-Jewish civilian workers who've been caught at this down-low economic activity with the Jewish prisoners. This camp is called "E-Lager," which stands for "Erziehung" ("education"). So, it's a "re-education" camp. Right.
- All this exchange activity is illegal, because everything that the prisoners have belongs to the prison. Even the gold fillings in the prisoners' teeth belong to the Nazis, and they'll end up with them one way or another—either while the prisoner is still alive, or after he's dead.
- Within this system of exchange, almost everyone is corrupt. Words like "good," "evil," "just" and "unjust" are not as clear-cut in Auschwitz as they may be on the outside.