Survival in Auschwitz Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Survival in Auschwitz - Essay Example This paper illustrates that the life at concentration camps was full of turmoil and hardships. Jews used to be transported by trains into these camps, and they were segregated according to their ability to function as Auschwitz-2 functioned as the site for the extermination of Jews. It had resulted in a total of 960,000 deaths of Jews over the years when the Third Reich was governing this part of Primo Levi was an Italian who was arrested in 1943 and deported to the city of Auschwitz, where he spent the next few months of his life in the most inhumane conditions he ever witnesses. Along with 650 other Italian Jews, he was loaded into a freight train which took them to Auschwitz. The train journey was 4 days long and no one was allowed to eat or drink water during the time of the journey. Apart from such severe restrictions, the inmates were also not allowed to talk to anyone else on the train. Primo Levi accounts these stories and describes them as the â€Å"most severe hardshipsâ⠂¬  which could have been effectuated on people. According to Levi’s writings and accounts of whatever he had witnessed at the camp, he writes about the kind of solidarity that was present among the various prisoners and inmates. This camp was one where people came in alone and died alone; no one could save anyone. It was not in the hands of a person to be able to safeguard someone else, even if he were a child or an old person. Auschwitz was one such place, therefore, where people spent time alone. However, Levi writes that despite this distance that people maintained from each other, there also was a sense of belonging and affiliation towards each other. This was because all the people there were stuck in the same situation and thus through various tasks, ideas and activities, were able to form their own groups and carry out the normal living as far as they could. People tried to help each other and be on the lookout for each other; their one common enemy was the Germans a nd all Jews were collectively against the kind of extreme situations they were being thrust into by them. This unity thus brought them together and is what is spoken about largely within the confines of the book by Levi.