Never will words be able to do justice to the torture, sadness, and pure loss of hope experienced within the barbed wire fences of concentration camps. Primo Levi’s recount of his time as a prisoner is the closest anyone on the outside will ever come to truly being able to understand it without experiencing the imprisonment first hand. Human beings were destroyed in these camps; deprived of their humanity and minimized to just a number. The Nazi Regime stripped these people of their past, present, and future. They slowly took away who they were; deteriorated their souls until they did not even recognize themselves simply because of their lineage. Primo Levi’s novel Survival in Auschwitz narrates his experience in the concentration camps and
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Upon arrival the prisoners were forced to strip down and dispose of their clothes, shave their heads and faces, and change into the matching striped uniforms. In the end, telling them apart would be nearly impossible; their only defining feature being the number tattooed on their arm. No longer an individual but just one of the millions; disposable. Once you take away someone’s identity you take away his or her only will to survive, the only thing that would give them motivation to fight for their lives. Once you have taken away their will you have won, they are good as dead, no longer fighting to survive. Towards the end of the book Primo says, “To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment” (pages 135-136). The Germans had won within a few short years they broke the souls of millions of people. Turning them from a person to a prisoner to just a number lost within the casualty count. They were defeated; surrendered to the brutal fate forced upon with no logical reasoning behind it, just a group of male patriotic …show more content…
Instead of strictly factual information about the holocaust, it gives personal stories, making its more emotional and influential. It shows us, in depth, the true dehumanization and destruction of these people and their souls. The reader is able to picture what these victims looked like, the one who had lost all hope and will to survive; able to picture the loss of self in their eyes without physically seeing them. The Nazi’s destroyed millions of lives in the cruelest ways imaginable. The holocaust is one of the most important historical events in the world, to forget about the event would be to forget about the millions who died because of it. Not only is that unacceptable but it is impossible. The destruction of a human soul is not a nonchalant activity and it should never be seen as such. Levi’s writing did an excellent job of describing the indescribable even though words will never be able to do justice to the torture, sadness, and pure loss of hope experienced within the barbed wire fences of concentration
Upon arrival the prisoners were forced to strip down and dispose of their clothes, shave their heads and faces, and change into the matching striped uniforms. In the end, telling them apart would be nearly impossible; their only defining feature being the number tattooed on their arm. No longer an individual but just one of the millions; disposable. Once you take away someone’s identity you take away his or her only will to survive, the only thing that would give them motivation to fight for their lives. Once you have taken away their will you have won, they are good as dead, no longer fighting to survive. Towards the end of the book Primo says, “To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment” (pages 135-136). The Germans had won within a few short years they broke the souls of millions of people. Turning them from a person to a prisoner to just a number lost within the casualty count. They were defeated; surrendered to the brutal fate forced upon with no logical reasoning behind it, just a group of male patriotic …show more content…
Instead of strictly factual information about the holocaust, it gives personal stories, making its more emotional and influential. It shows us, in depth, the true dehumanization and destruction of these people and their souls. The reader is able to picture what these victims looked like, the one who had lost all hope and will to survive; able to picture the loss of self in their eyes without physically seeing them. The Nazi’s destroyed millions of lives in the cruelest ways imaginable. The holocaust is one of the most important historical events in the world, to forget about the event would be to forget about the millions who died because of it. Not only is that unacceptable but it is impossible. The destruction of a human soul is not a nonchalant activity and it should never be seen as such. Levi’s writing did an excellent job of describing the indescribable even though words will never be able to do justice to the torture, sadness, and pure loss of hope experienced within the barbed wire fences of concentration