Human The Prisoners example essay topic

Primo Levi's, Survival in Auschwitz, is autobiographical account of the ten months that Levi spent in a German death camp. Survival recounts the struggle of the Jews to maintain a flicker of humanity against the Germans unending attempt to reduce the Jews to mere animals. The prisoners suffered from all types of atrocities from lack of food to being beaten for the least offense. Everything the Germans did was dedicated toward one purpose, to take away the basic foundations of what makes a person human: awareness of time, the ability to communicate, the ability to think and a persons self-awareness. The Germans are taking away the Jews future; all that matters to the prisoners is how to survive the now, their slang for never is: morgen fr " uh, tomorrow morning. From the moment that prisoners entered Auschwitz the campaign began of transforming men into beasts, the Germans immediately begin to use time as a means to take away the Jews humanity.

The prisoners were herded into a large room to wait with the only means to track time is dripping polluted water unsuitable to even quench their thirst. Levi remarks, "This is hell... a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens... What can one think about? One cannot think anymore, it is like being already dead.

The time passes drop by drop". (22) Without the ability to track time man begins to loose his ability to think and once that is gone man is nothing more than an animal. The prisoners had everything taken from them after getting to the camp. They were forced to strip, given showers, had their heads shaven, and given uniforms. They even had their names taken away; every Jew was given a number and had it tattooed on their left arm. A man posses nothing, is reduced to nothing, he has had his identity taken away and is no longer a man.

He loses his dignity, restraint, himself. The prisoners were beat down through mental and physical abuse, working from sunup to sundown at strenuous tasks on almost no food. To remain human the prisoners needed to maintain their identity, "to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains". (27) It was a constant fight to hold onto the flicker of humanity of oneself. The Jews of the death camps were isolated from the rest of the world. When a person is cut off from contact with other humans, he eventually becomes cut off from himself.

Even though the Jewish prisoners were in contact with each other communication was often very difficult because all the nationalities were mixed together and there was no common language. Prisoners often died or were killed before establishing a means of communicating. The Germans figured that if the Jews had no contact with the outside world that they would be forgotten; "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". (82) Try as they did the Germans could not completely cut off the Jews from the outside world. Levi was fortunate enough to befriend Lorenzo, a civilian, that helped Levi to remember that he was still part of the human race. Lorenzo supplied Levi with some physical aid such as food and other supplies, but these things were infinitesimal compared to the window into humanity he showed Levi.

Lorenzo allowed Levi to see that there was still good in the world and hold onto a flickering flame of humanity, "Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated... Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man". (122) Many Jews succumbed to the punishment and were reduced to animals, but the Germans were unable to completely stamp out the Jews' humanity. Levi claims at one point, "Poor silly Kraus. If he only knew that it is not true, ... , 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". (135) Kraus was a new prisoner that Levi says he dreamed about.

He tells Kraus this to give Kraus some comfort. Even though Levi tries to deny that Kraus meant anything to him; it is evident that Levi was still holding on to his humanity even after the hardships he had been through. Levi also maintained a close friendship with Alberto, a fellow Jew, even after Levi was selected to work in the lab as a chemist. Working in the lab kept Levi from the long hard hours at work, it also gave Levi access to hard to find items that could be traded on the black market.

Instead of hoarding this good fortune to himself Levi shared the wealth. The black-market was another means that the prisoners clung to their humanity. Owning even, the most crude of possession gave the prisoners a link to the outside world. The market was also an environment where human interaction took place. It allowed the prisoners to escape from the routine of the labor camp for a while.

Try as they might the Germans were never able to squash the humanity out of the Jews. Near the end of the book after the Germans have fled the camp leaving the sick and wounded behind the flicker of humanity left in the prisoners flamed to life. Levi and some of the healthier inmates searched the camp to find a stove to heat the barracks. They also found food, cooked, fed and cared for the weaker men. In return the sick men willingly gave a portion of their meager ration to the care takers even though it was never asked of them.

Levi and many of his comrades maintained enough of their humanity to survive and fulfill their dreams of telling the world of all they suffered.