Journal #3

Chapter 3. Initiation

"I must confess it: after only one week of prison, the instinct for cleanliness
disappeared in me (p.41)."

This quote made me thinking a lot. Is it an instinct that we want to be clean and pure? Apparently, there are people who do not wash regularly - not because they can't afford to, but because they simply don't feel like washing. It is true that it wouldn't hurt them too much if they don't wash often. But is taking shower or bathing what we instinctly want to do? I doubt it. Rather, it seems that they are only part of what we do because of the social norms. Without dressing properly, without taking shower every night, without eating on exactly the same time everyday, we can manage to live. (and we tend to disobey the rules rather than to abide by them. rules exist only for the sake of better standard of living, not for human instinct.)
So, what's the meaning of "the instinct for cleanliness disappearing?" To me, it sounds like the Jews were deprived of their dignity and humanity. Not washing often, not sleeping regularly, not eating sufficiently, they are becoming more like primitive. How are they different from uncivilized people like the Sawi? It is more humiliating that they are forced to lose their dignity than that they are shot to be killed. Even if they are killed, they can still preserve their humanity.

Journal #2

Chapter 2. On the Bottom

"But men are rarely logical when their own fate is at stake; on every
occasion, they prefer the extreme positions... The two classes of pessimists and
optimists are not so clearly defined, however, not because there are many
agnostics, but because the majority without memory or coherence, drift between
the two extremes, according to the moment and the mood of the person they happen to meet. (p.36)

In chapter 2, Primo Levi describes how extreme people become depending on the circumstances under which they are situated. According to him, there is no clear boundary between pessimists and optimists, because people drift between the two, as they experience different experiences and moods.

This seems to depict human behavior under extreme cirumstances. When people are driven out of their home and of what they are used to, they seem to lose composition and become extreme. They have no fixed principles, becuase they have lost their faith. This leads them to lose their own personalities and human characteristics, which probably is one of the worst consequences of living in Auschwitz.

Journal #1

Chapter 1. The Journey

The first impression this book gave me was the word, "grotesque." I actually read a book about the same topic before, "Night," by Ellie Weasel. It was an autobiography that Ellie Weasel wrote about his experience in a concentration camp. One thing that I found common in both works was the attitude of German soldiers. They seem to be kind to the Jews at first, but they actually treat them with great abhorrence. Here is a quote from Survival in Auschwitz, on page 19:

"They behaved with the calm assurance of people doing their normal duty of every
day. But Renzo stayed an instant too long to say good-bye to Francesca, his
fiancee, and with a single blow they knocked him to the ground. It was their
everyday duty."

This description intrigued me because there was no reason for German soldiers to hate the Jews and hit them. This chapter gave me a good introduction to the concentration camp.

Journal #0

Reflection to Auschwitz video...

I should say that the movie was shocking to me. The documentary, most of all, basically corrected my disillusionment of concentration camps. I thought they were simply used for the Nazis to bring together the Jews and to make them work in the camps. After watching the documentary, I found that I was totally wrong, as there were about 11,000,000 Jews arrested and sentenced to death.
What surprised me the most, however, was the way some contemporary people viewed the Holocaust. There was a person who came out on the documentary and commented on how he felt about what Nazis did to the Jews. He said, surprisingly, "We don't regret for what we did to them. We regret for what we didn't do to them."
This comment, again, astounded me, because I thought everyone felt sorry about the victims of atrocity that the Nazis had committed. I probably have been assuming too many things that are far from true. This video helped me with getting rid of some premature assumption.