Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man.
Upon arriving in Buna, a work camp near Auschwitz, Levi and the other Italian Jewish men are kept in a state of discomfort, deprivation, and disorientation. Everything has been taken from them, from their hair to the knowledge of where their families (the women and children) are. No one listens to them or attempts to communicate respectfully. Levi writes of the strength it will take for his people to hold on to their names and identities in this horrible place. This is what he refers to as "the demolition of a man": the casual cruelty that strips away a person's dignity.
But this was the sense, not forgotten either then or later: 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 therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.
Levi repeatedly equates the sharing of this story with survival. This refers not just to his own individual survival, but to the survival of all of humanity: the "form of civilization," meaning the ideal that we must strive for. The effort to reduce Levi and the other Jewish prisoners to "beasts" was an endeavor to strip them of their humanity. Therefore their own insistence on their humanity was a path towards inner liberation that could not be taken from them despite brutal treatment and murder. In this quote, Levi paraphrases his friend Steinlauf, but his lapse of memory causes him to communicate the sense of what Steinlauf said in his (Levi's) own words. The use of colons and semi-colons extends the sentence, building upon its meaning with each phrase.
He is thirty, but like all of us, could be taken for seventeen or fifty.
Here, Levi describes Resnyk, his new bunkmate. This description showcases the physical toil that the Nazi effort had on the bodies of prisoners in the camps. At first glance, this quote does not seem to make sense. But when one thinks of the starvation and abuse endured by the prisoners, one can then imagine how the prisoners could appear to be seventeen or fifty. Their body masses shrunk considerably, and this vulnerability gives the impression simultaneously of youth and of age.
We now invite the reader to contemplate the possible meaning in the Lager of the words 'good' and 'evil', 'just' and unjust'; let everybody judge, on the basis of the picture we have outlined and the examples given above, how much of our ordinary moral world could survive on this side of the barbed wire.
Levi tells the reader of the way in which prisoners stole, bartered, and otherwise "got by" in the camps. People who had never stolen a thing in their ordinary lives outside the camps were forced to steal food, or paper, or anything that could be traded for bread and soup. Each person seemed to develop an expertise, either charming the English prisoners of war into giving them some of their food rations, or devising ways in which they could steal supplies from the Nazi officers when they had the opportunity and means. Levi's stories make the prisoners sound devious and dishonest, but his argument is that ordinary morals and the following of rules will only lead a person to a quicker death in the camps. When man is forced to live in an immoral and debased world, it is impossible to expect him to do so with the morals of the civilized world that he has left behind.
If Elias regains his liberty he will be confined to the fringes of human society, in a prison or a lunatic asylum. But here in the Lager there are no criminals nor madmen; no criminals because there are no laws to contravene, no madmen because we are wholly deprived of free will, as our every action is, in time and place, the only conceivable one.
Elias is a prisoner with a fearsome work ethic and an apparently super-human physical capacity for hard work. He undertakes physical tasks that no other prisoner could undertake. Elias is driven by a need to fulfill his orders and nothing seems to break his spirit. This strength and attitude in society would make him insane or cause him to be a criminal, but the circumstances in the camp are different. It is therefore the people who would have the most difficulty fitting in in "normal" civilized society who are able to cope the best with the daily life of their inhumane situation. This quality allows Elias to resist both physical destruction and annihilation from within.
To sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the discipline of the work and the camp. Experience showed that only exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way.
In this chapter, Levi describes the difference between what he calls "the drowned" and "the saved," or those who would die and those who might live. The "drowned" play by the book, doing everything they are told and working hard because they still cling to the logic that if they work hard, then they will earn and eat. But In the Lager, the rules are different—every prisoner is expendable. Not only that, but they are destined to die in this system created by the Nazis. Thus whoever follows the rules of this system (carrying out all orders, eating only the designated ration, being disciplined) will only die quicker.
But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.
Whatever reminded Levi of his humanity and manhood in the camps was an essential source for survival. This is because the environment of the camps constantly traumatized and dehumanized the prisoners. Though Levi often didn't have the energy to think of life outside the camps while he was in the throes of labor and starvation, it was necessary for him to have moments of remembrance and connection to his own humanity. It was during the times when Levi was removed from these two conditions (of intense labor and starvation) that he could remember himself and think of larger things. Being in the infirmary and having the opportunity to work in the chemistry lab gave were examples of such moments. But it was his friendship with Lorenzo that he clung to the tightest, because this pure human connection reminded him of a world not determined by bare physical needs.
Poor silly Kraus. If he only knew that it is not true, that I have really dreamt nothing about him, that he is nothing to me except for a brief moment, nothing like everything is nothing down here, except the hunger inside and the cold and the rain around.
Kraus is a Hungarian newcomer in the camps who Levi believes is not likely to survive long due to his naiveté and propensity to follow the rules. In a moment that Levi calls important, Levi tells Kraus a made-up story about a dream he claims to have had in which they were at Levi's family home, enjoying the hospitality there. Kraus is immensely grateful, as this allows him to imagine such desirable conditions. In the quote above, Levi pities Kraus and diminishes his importance. However, the fact that Levi felt compelled to take the time and share this false dream in broken German so as to communicate it to Kraus demonstrates Levi's own humanity. When he looked at Kraus, he saw "the eyes of the man Kraus," and he sought to comfort this man before his inevitable destruction by the Nazis. Levi may claim that Kraus was nothing more to him than a brief moment, but it was important enough to be included in the book. This shows that once Levi returned to living in the outside world and was not fully focused on "the hunger inside and the cold and the rain around," he fully remembered this instance of human connection.
But in the morning, I hardly escape the raging wind and cross the doorstep of the laboratory when I find at my side the comrade of all my peaceful moments, of Ka-Be, of the rest-Sundays—the pain of remembering, the old ferocious suffering of feeling myself a man again, which attacks me like a dog the moment my conscience comes out of the gloom.
During the times when Levi is not physically ground down by starvation, cold weather, and backbreaking work, he experiences the internal suffering of his conscience. One's conscience is one's inner feeling or voice that indicates to the self the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior. When this guiding force comes out of dormancy, Levi must reckon with the impacts of dehumanization. Most humans can't withstand this kind of physical, psychological, and spiritual treatment forever. Even when Levi is not being physically harmed, his spirit suffers. This is particularly painful for Levi, who is shown to have a scientific and artistic nature, and who is concerned with greater truths about humanity. Not only does Levi suffer as an individual, but it deeply pains him to think about what the camps mean for humanity as a whole. All of this "attacks" Levi during moments of physical recuperation.
All the healthy prisoners (except a few prudent ones who at the last moment undressed and hid themselves in the hospital beds) left during the night of 18 January 1945. They must have been about twenty thousand, coming from different camps. Almost in their entirety they vanished during the evacuation march: Alberto was among them. Perhaps someone will write their story one day.
In a clinical and somewhat detached tone, Levi describes how the so-called evacuation march was really a death march. Factually, the number of prisoners was closer to sixty thousand than to twenty, unless the twenty thousand mentioned here are only from the nearby camps. There is no emotional lament in this statement, despite the fact that Levi's best friend was among the thousands who died. This is the extent to which Levi writes about the matter, and in all, the section is brief and clipped. Levi only writes about that which he personally experienced, and so perhaps feels that this march is not his story to tell.
