Abigail Storch Storch 1 The Closing of Consciousness in Primo Levi s Survival in Auschwitz In his harrowing memoir Survival in Auschwitz, originally titled If This is a Man, Primo Levi prefaces the account of his experience in the concentration camp with a brief poem which includes the following lines: Consider if this is a man Who works in the mud Who does not know peace Who fights for a scrap of bread Who dies because of a yes or a no. 1 As Levi recounts his story, the reader bears in mind these chilling questions. Can these prisoners actually be men? Can suffering reduce one s very humanity to nothing? Throughout his memoir, Levi describes the ways in which the prisoners he encounters retain or relinquish their humanity: some fight to hold onto dignity through kindness to others, some do whatever they must to survive, some surrender helplessly to the unimaginable pain and become hollow men long before they reach the crematorium, and some travel there and back again they experience the dull closing of consciousness and later, the acute sting of revival. 2 Writing retrospectively, Levi recounts his own unique journey one of dehumanization and reawakening. In Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi explores the notion of what it means to be human and argues that under the intense pressure of suffering, a person s humanity is defined by the consciousness of his essential dignity. He who fights for this consciousness throughout his suffering retains his humanity, but he who surrenders his consciousness to silence forfeits the very core of what makes him human. 1 Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996), 11. 2 Ibid., 34.
Storch 2 Levi describes Auschwitz as an enormous machine of double-extermination, as it destroys one person twice over. Describing a man who has lost all his possessions and loved ones, he states, He will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term extermination camp. 3 Under this concept of double death, the demolition of a man often long precedes his entrance into the gas chamber. 4 Even those who physically survive may lose themselves as their thoughts are reduced to the desperate cries of hunger and weariness. Their human consciousness, the awareness of their essential dignity, is gradually abandoned under the great strain of physical suffering. In Auschwitz, the endless hours of toil contribute to the closing of consciousness as the inmates are subjected to exhausting labor in the worst conditions. Levi describes the seemingly meaningless labor in Auschwitz as the resolution of others to annihilate us first as men in order to kill us more slowly afterwards. 5 He continues, remembering the band that plays as the inmates march toward their work sites, When this music plays we know that our comrades, out in the fog, are marching like automatons; their souls are dead and the music drives them, like the wind drives dead leaves, and takes the place of their wills. There is no longer any will. 6 The grief and pain of their human degradation is eclipsed by the acute physical suffering of difficult labor, so the more urgent need to keep moving, to shoulder the next load, rises to the surface of thought. The will of the inmates is reduced to indifference as the ever-present physical discomfort takes the place of conscious rationality. 3 Ibid., 34. 4 Ibid., 26. 5 Ibid., 51. 6 Ibid., 51.
Storch 3 During brief periods of respite, the awakening of the consciousness and the restoration of one s humanity proves to be excruciatingly painful. As Levi describes waking up from a dream of his family, he writes, Alas for the dreamer: the moment of consciousness that accompanies the awakening is the acutest of sufferings. But it does not often happen to us, and they are not long dreams. We are only tired beasts. 7 Similarly, when he is injured and must spend several weeks in the infirmary, Levi is driven almost mad with grief as he rests from work, and, momentarily far away from the curses and the blows, he begins to consider his experiences not as an automaton, but as an aching human: When one works, one suffers and there is no time to think: our homes are less than a memory. But here the time is ours: from bunk to bunk, despite the prohibition, we exchange visits and we talk and we talk. The wooden hut, crammed with suffering humanity, is full of words, memories and of another pain. Heimweh the Germans call this pain; it is a beautiful word, it means longing for one s home. 8 Though the awakening of consciousness is accompanied by the pain of remembering, the old ferocious suffering of feeling myself a man again, Levi, along with the other patients in the infirmary, finds his recovery to be a time to remember who he truly is and to regain the strength to fight for consciousness in the days ahead. 9 And it is a fight indeed. To hold onto one s reason and one s memories in a place where no reasons exist and where memories seem no more than dreams is nigh impossible. Levi writes, One has to fight against the current; to battle every day and every hour against exhaustion, hunger, cold and the resulting inertia to sharpen one s wits, build up one s patience, strengthen one s willpower. Or else, to throttle all dignity and kill all conscience, to climb down into the arena as a beast against other beasts. 10 He proceeds to describe the difficulty of achieving survival of both body and 7 Ibid., 44. 8 Ibid., 55. 9 Ibid., 142. 10 Ibid., 92.
Storch 4 spirit, Survival without renunciation of any part of one s own moral world apart from powerful and direct interventions by fortune was conceded only to a very few superior individuals, made of the stuff of martyrs and saints. 11 However, in the midst of the single grey machine of enslaved laborers, some individuals managed to survive on both counts, and Levi includes their stories. 12 Levi describes his observation of a friend s method of resisting oppression and retaining his dignity in the face of brutish treatment during his first few weeks in the concentration camp. Levi asks his friend Steinlauf why he routinely washes his hands and face in putrid water, for it makes no difference for cleanliness. Steinlauf explains that the intention of the entire system of the work camp is to reduce the inmates to beasts; therefore they must purpose to survive as men: We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline, but to remain alive, not to begin to die. 13 Levi remarks on the subject, In this place it is practically pointless to wash every day in the turbid water of the filthy washbasins for purposes of cleanliness and health; but it is most important as a symptom of remaining vitality, and necessary as an instrument of moral survival. 14 This seemingly insignificant practice of washing one s hands in dirty water holds highest significance to Steinlauf and Levi, for it is a distinctly human action that demonstrates that even though others treat them as animals, the inmates refuse to forfeit their dignity. The 11 Ibid., 92. 12 Ibid., 51. 13 Ibid., 41. 14 Ibid., 40.
Storch 5 simple, methodical practice of the washing of hands was a conscious sign of resistance for Steinlauf, a refusal to consent to such dehumanization. Levi also tells the stories of several other inmates who, through unspecified methods, retain their humanity in spite of horrific treatment. One such man is his best friend Alberto, who Levi remains close with until his death. Remembering his friend, Levi writes, Alberto entered the Lager with his head high, and lives in here unscathed and uncorrupted I always saw, and still see in him, the rare figure of the strong yet peace-loving man against whom the weapons of night are blunted. 15 Similarly, Levi credits his survival of body and soul to the kindness of an Italian civilian worker in the camp, Lorenzo, who gave him extra food and clothing: I believe that it was 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. 16 He later says of Lorenzo, His humanity was pure and uncontaminated; he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man. 17 The conscious resistance to reduction and the bold acts of kindness of a few individual men remind Levi of what it is to be human and encourage him to fight for his dignity, to refuse to be reduced to a hollow man or a beast. Primo Levi recognizes his own journey as one in which he succumbs to the closing of consciousness but is later revived. In others inmates, Levi distinguishes between those who surrender to dehumanization and those who fight against it and retain their humanity, but in his own experience, he describes both a surrender and a certain resurrection that is due solely to 15 Ibid., 57. 16 Ibid., 122. 17 Ibid., 122.
Storch 6 merciful actions of others. In short, he recounts in himself the transformation from a man to a beast to a man again. After describing the vitality and vigor of his days before Auschwitz, he remarks, Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold; I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself. 18 As Levi recounts the heroic struggle to survive in the abandoned infirmary before liberation, he remembers a man who offered his bread to those who had maintained the fire and says, It was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from Haftlinge to men again. 19 In fact, Levi credits his resurrection to the work of others; when other humans treat him as human, he reawakens to consciousness of his humanity. His redemption lies outside himself. Is this a man the inmate who works in the mud, who knows naught of peace, who fights for food, who dies at the whim of another? In perhaps the most telling lines of the memoir, Primo Levi declares that he does not believe that man is brutish and bestial when social institutions are removed, rather that the only conclusion to be drawn is that in the face of driving necessity and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are reduced to silence. 20 It is when human consciousness is reduced to this silence that men relinquish their humanity and their dignity and become docile beasts, characterized by numbness, no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment. 21 However, in the fight against silence, the fight to remain consciously human in spite of inhuman treatment, some men manage to emerge victorious. Further, those who survive have the unique capacity to awaken those who have surrendered to the silencing of consciousness, and it is due to the humanity of these resilient survivors that Primo Levi himself 18 Ibid., 144. 19 Ibid., 160. 20 Ibid., 87. 21 Ibid., 150.
Storch 7 survives. In his hellish memoir of ten months spent in the death camp of Auschwitz, Primo Levi argues that the defining trait of humanity is an active consciousness; a rational human consciousness awake and aware of its dignity.