In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo and his fellow prisoners endure all types of hellish suffering while in Auschwitz. In fact, the entire complex was diabolically designed to be a sort of mechanized factory for churning out the most brutal of horrors. The prisoners are given very little to eat—pretty much a thin soup with a few lousy pieces of potato, cabbage, or rutabaga lurking at the bottom, with a few scraps of bread. They are forced to wear ill-fitting shoes that raise blisters that carry the ever-present threat of infection. The point of all this suffering is to methodically dehumanize the prisoners by stripping them of their possessions, hair, and names. To the Nazis, they are nothing more than "pieces," and "cattle," and are treated accordingly.
Questions About Dehumanization and Suffering
- Why do you think people like the Kapos and Prominenz are willing to make others miserable? Why are they complicit in making their own people suffer?
- Zeigler, one of Primo's housemates, is very vocal about having been "selected" and is entitled to an extra helping of soup. Why do you think he's so adamant about this?
- What might lie behind the Nazi's need to be so pitilessly cruel to the prisoners? What greater goal does this accomplish?
- What was the point of making the prisoners feel subhuman?
- What is the effect of Primo never really finding out what happened to the women and children who arrived on the train with him?
Chew on This
The phrase "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is so not applicable to the situation in Auschwitz.
Levi needs to make the images of suffering in Auschwitz extremely graphic and disturbing so people reading his book will never forget what happened there.
The process of making Jews into "subhumans" worthy of contempt and even destruction was a backbone of the Nazi philosophy long before the "Final 'Solution" (the complete extermination of European Jewry) was planned or the concentration camps built.