It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944, that is, after the German government had decided, owing to the growing scarcity of labour, to lengthen the average life span of the prisoners destined for elimination; it conceded noticeable improvements in the camp routine and temporarily suspended killings at the whim of individuals...............
It seems to me unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented.
The above is from the authors preface. This like the book itself is so understated its chilling. The preface further states that he does not go into numbers to any great extent as him doing it would add nothing to to atrocities recounted many times. The one set of numbers he does recount is there were approximately 640 humans in his train to Auschwitz, within 24 hours 500 of these humans no longer existed.
This book like ...Ivan Denisovich is about the will to survive for some humans. Many did horrible things to enable their survival, Levi recounts some of these events stating what these people did, he admires them in a way but does not ever wish to see these people again.
This was a death camp, the ever present view of the chimneys smoking was a constant reminder what eventually awaited them all. The "selections", when a new shipment of humans was due, camp authorities went through the barracks and selected 7% of the camp population, generally because they were failing physically sometimes just on a whim for death to make room. This was 7% of 12,000 humans; twenty four hours later this 7% no longer existed.
Again, this terror is recounted in such an understated way it makes it doubly chilling.
This is one of those books like Denisovich that should be required reading in schools. It was initially published in 1947 but did not find an audience until the early 50's. Even at the time of original publication the denial machine was attempting to re-write events, sadly the denial machine is still trying to deny the monstrosity that was Nazi Germany.
No comments:
Post a Comment