¶ … Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. Discussing their daily activities in the concentration camps, their physical and psychological problems that they encountered, how the people behaved, and our own personal reflections on the situation.
Survival in Auschwitz
Auschwitz, Poland is a concentration camp built 150 miles outside Warsaw in May 1940. The commander is Rudolf Hoss and is staffed by SS Death's Head units. Primo Levi, a 24-year-old man who has been a prisoner here since early 1944. He studied chemistry at the University of Turin and graduated in 1941. He moved to northern Italy to join the resistance against Benito Mussolini but was captured in December 1943 and sent to Auschwitz.
He tells us it was a four-day train trip in crammed boxcars with nothing to eat or drink, midnight arrival, the first of many summary interrogations that led to either a slavish existence or swift death. Clothes taken, hair shaved, naked and cold, already starving: and this was just the beginning.
The camp, or lager, is a society with certain unforgiving laws, many of which are derived not from the guards but the prisoners. The camp is divided between those who will drown (the muselmann) and those who may survive. A man has to be cunning: if one follows the rules, one dies. It was you against everyone else, you had to keep an eye on your clothes, bowl, or spoon, or another prisoner would steal them. There was no pity for your fellows. Pity lead to death. Apart from the indispensable ingredient of luck, survival...
Auschwitz gave to Promo Levi when he dared to ask the "Why?" question. To be sure, the guard was simply attempting to be cynical and sarcastic rather than reflective or philosophical, but LaCapra is also critical of Claude Lanzmann for failing to ask this question enough in Shoah. All of the Germans who Lanzmann interviewed were either perpetrators of complicit bystanders, and they spent a great deal of time
Critical Thinking in Humanities Essential Characteristics of Critical Thinking in Humanities We, the students of humanities, are aware that critical thinking and inquire are essential for our discipline. But what does it really mean? How do we understand and exercise critical thinking? The readings in this class taught me that critical thinking is learn best from real life experiences of people who have struggled and fought for freedom and liberation of the
But whether it is suitable for all remains in doubt. An individual searching for a meaningful occupation after college, for example, or who has just lost a loved one and cannot stop asking 'why,' may benefit from the presumptions of logotherapy. However, an individual seeking an immediate solution to a psychological problem of a specific onset and duration may require a form of therapy that is more directed. Individuals
Chekhov employed an attitude similar to most nineteenth century short story writers, as he attempted to captivate the reader's attention through putting across concepts that would make it especially difficult for him or her to keep his or her state of mind. The lawyer and the banker both go through intense emotional and physical occurrences as they struggle to find their personal identity. The fact that the banker eventually
interview of a single survivor available in the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. The survivor in the film was Mordecai Topel from Poland. Due to the length of the interview, we will focus upon the first 30-60 minutes of the interview, specifically to analyze the initial foundational issues of Polish anti-semitism, the initial German occupation of Poland and life in the ghetto and slave labor in
Faith and God in Elie Wiesel's Night Elie Wiesel's Night is a dramatic autobiographical novel that vividly describes the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust. Words do not make justice to what happened in German concentration camps, but if one is to see a glimpse of it in a written novel, the writings of Wiesel are the place to look for it. Wiesel describes in vivid details the sheer cruelty and absolute
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