After reading Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, I sat and tried to determine which aspect of this extraordinary book moved me the most. Although the memoir contained many levels and forms of torture and degradation, I found my mind continually drawn to the lyrical and, at times, heartbreakingly beautiful language used to describe much harrowing and dehumanizing experiences. I was amazed that such beautiful language could so vividly describe the revolting and horrifying way that the Jews were systematically broken down into lifeless Haftlinge before being exterminated. Levi's lyrical writing made his survival story so real that I felt like I was joining him as he was pushed further and further away from his humanity, his sense of self. Through his gift of language, Levi was able to make the reader understand how he could say that the victims of the Holocaust weren't men, weren't human, rather than the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. His evocative writing allowed the reader to understand that enduring such extreme suffering and deprivation can extinguish the spark of life necessary to be considered a man, a human being. Levi's words painted a clear picture of the Haftlinge's inability to hope, to dream or to concentrate on anything besides the cold, their hunger and their physical pain. The SS officers, on the other hand, according to Levi, could still be considered men, albeit evil men, because they still desired things and cared about their futures, as they were certain they would have futures.
Even when it became clear that the tide of the war was changing and that the allied forces were drawing nearer, the Jews viewed these changes with complete indifference. Levi captured this indifference with the following eloquent words: "...it was not a conscious resignation, but the opaque torpor of beasts broken in by blows, whom the blows no longer hurt" (118). This lyrical sentence was just one example of the way Levi conveyed the complete lack of hope and soul annihilating despair that defined the life of the Jewish prisoners. Levi artfully explained further that their dehumanizing treatment within the camp and lack of connection with the outside world led the Jewish prisoners to feel as if they were "untouchables," condemned to a life of suffering and unworthy of interactions with ordinary civilians. These feelings of condemnation and sub-human status made Levi and his fellow Haftlinge believe that they had no say in their own fates so there was no point wondering what would happen to them when the Russians made it to Auschwitz. Months of being completely at the German's mercy caused the Jewish prisoners to be doubtful that any change to the camp would better their situation. Their lives at the camp were rooted in hopelessness and a complete lack of power. As Levi stated in many unique and moving ways, to be human is to desire and to hope, and the Germans had made it their mission to strip the Jews of their humanity.
Levi's ability to move past the physical torture and pain the Jews suffered to the destruction of their individual identities and sense of human worth made this memoir so powerful to me. He created powerful images that depicted just what it meant and felt like to be an untouchable and how crushing such feelings can be to the human psyche. Most impressive of all, Levi managed to express the total annihilation of the human spirit in such hauntingly beautiful prose, prose that stayed with me long after I finished reading the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment