Survival in Auschwitz (If this is a man) Race Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

Then one of them took my arm and looked at my number and then both laughed still more strongly. Everyone knows that the 174000s are the Italian Jews, the well-known Italian Jews who arrived two months ago, all lawyers, all with degrees, who were more than a hundred and are now only forty; the ones who do not know how to work, and let their bread be stolen, and are slapped from the morning to the evening. The Germans call them "zwei linke Hände" (two left hands), and even the Polish Jews despise them as they do not speak Yiddish. (4.36)

So, not only are the Italian Jews considered rather useless because they are a bunch of weak smarty-pants (lawyers and other educated professionals), but the other Jews don't like them because they don't speak Yiddish. Speaking this language would have allowed Primo and the other Italian Jews to more easily become part of the community of other Jews in the camp.

Quote #5

They [civilian prisoners] work in separate Kommandos and they have no contact of any sort with the common Häftlinge. In fact, the Lager is for them a punishment, and if they do not die of exhaustion or illness they can expect to return among men; if they could communicate with us, it would create a breach in the wall which keeps us dead to the world, and a ray of light into the mystery which prevails among free men about our condition. For us, on the contrary, the Lager is not a punishment; for us, no end is foreseen and the Lager is nothing but a manner of living assigned to us, without limits of time, in the bosom of the Germanic social organism. (8.16)

See the big difference between the civilian prisoners and the Jewish ones? For the civilians, their imprisonment will eventually end. For the Jews, it is very different. What are they being punished for? For being Jews. They're not there because of any crime they have committed. The implication here is that they are there until they die.

Quote #6

The Jewish prominents form a sad and notable human phenomenon. In them converge present, past and atavistic sufferings, and the tradition of hostility towards the stranger makes them monsters of asociality and insensitivity. (9.14)

Levi is commenting on the group of Jewish prisoners that were part of the command structure of the concentration camps. Because of the things they've endured, and what they're now required to do (brutally oppress their own people), they make ideal guards for the SS. As Jews, they know they can be killed at any moment if the SS thinks they aren't harsh enough with the prisoners.