This chapter introduces a black market inside the Auschwitz. Black market usually has bad connotations because of the things traded inside the market. They usually trade forbidden things, like drugs, weapons, etc - honestly i don't know too much about them - but in Auschwitz it's different. They trade what they really need and it seems that this market is rather a "white market." All the prisoners benefit from the trade, except that theft and counter-theft is prevalent in this place.
More interesting feature of the market was that it looked more like a society inside the camp. For instance, there is fluctuation in the value of certain goods, just like what happends in our economic system:
"There have been periods in which the prize-coupon was worth one ration of
bread, then one and a quarter, even one and a third; one day it was quoted at
one and a half ration, but then the supply of Mahorca to the canteen failed,
sothat, lacking a coverage, the money collapsed at once to a quarter of a
ration."
It tells us that wherever people gather, there is a society, almost the same with the one in which we live. Maybe this is why we sometimes consider books as mirrors of the society; even in this biography we find a distinct society in the camp.
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