2016-11-16 - Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi ================================================ White roses logo History book review written on September 1st, 2009, followed by notes written today. The author writes in a detached, dispassionate style that is comparatively easy to read. Yet the numbers alone tell a harsh tale. The author was one in a convoy of 650 Jews from Italy, loaded onto 12 freight cars. Of those 650, 96 men and 29 women entered the camps. By October 1944, 21 men remained. Out of the author's freight car, 4 eventually saw their homes again. The night of January 18th 1945 the outside temperature was -50F. The author was in a hospital and the camp had no power or heat. Explosions broke the windows during an air raid. It was a mixed curse because the cold temperature helped to control the spread of disease. I found it an interesting idea that the destruction of one's personality would be more frightening than death. One did not survive by being good. > To sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all > 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. Companionship and hope made all the difference. > However little sense there may be in trying to specify why I, > rather than thousands of others, managed to survive the test, I > believe that it is really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and > not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly > reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of > being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, > something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not > savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to > define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth > surviving. author: Levi, Primo detail: ISBN: 0684826801 source: tags: biography,ebook,history,non-fiction title: Survival in Auschwitz Tags ==== biography ebook history non-fiction