Journal #13

Chapter 13. October 1944

'Selekcja.' I found more fear in the word than any other words in the book. But it was not just fear that it created.

"The young tell the young that all the old ones will be chose. The healthy tell
the healthy that only the ill will be chosen. Specialists will be excluded.
German Jews will be excluded. Low numbers will be excluded. You will be chosen.
I will be excluded."

How simplistic point of view is that. It shows how people are reluctant to see themselves susceptible to what is very probable to happen to them. This does not only put the prisoners into fear, but also disorganizes them. They try to find others' weaknesses and reasons to be picked and killed.

"It is absurd of Wertheimer to hope: he looks sixty, he has enormous varicose
veins, he hardly even notices the hunger anymore. But he lies down on his bed,
serene and quiet, and replies to someone who asks him with my own words."

Has Primo Levi changed? He seems like he's judging others based on their probability of survival, rather than personality or value. Nasty things that Germans inflicted on the prisoners made their lifestyle, value, and personality readjust to the Auschwitz. That is the most humiliating part of it.