Ok so this is my first book review. I usually don't come around to reading alot, after all my generation is one brought up by the telivision not the library, however- this book was the focus of my holocaust literature class this semester- a class I am taking at Florida International University, and has proved to be a very raw and truthful account of the tragedies that took place within the concentration encampment at Auschwitz- first hand by survivor Sara Nomberg-Przytk. It's one of those books you can't put down- I recommend every one to pick it up but not just for that matter, but because its a part of our history that should never be forgotten- and hey, i'm neither Jewish nor German- i'm a human. So yea with out further a do:
The name of the game Auschwitz presented was a very real and a very blunt one: adapt or die. Even when prisoners applied the mentality that ‘work will make you free’, no one was ever safe at any given moment. The struggle to survive was an everyday reality for the prisoners, and understanding why subjecting them to such actions which took place within the Auschwitz encampment will be the focus of this essay.
First off, for the prisoners at Auschwitz, there was never much choice in the circumstance at hand. The newly arrived were immediately beaten and kicked mercilessly and endlessly. Not knowing how or where to hide they “made themselves absurd trying to defend their human dignity” (13). They, in consequence would torment themselves over the orders and commands that were unfamiliar to them, unable to comprehend the reason a human would act so viciously on another human with seemingly no motive. Understanding this knew and grotesque code within Auschwitz was a brutal and devastating battle for every Zugangi- “a word they used for new prisoners who did not know how to organize” (13). We could say that for every prisoner who entered the gates which read “Arbeit macht frei” , a very clear choice was presented to them none the less: live or die.
Finding the will and strength to live however, was not something easily acquired. Nomberg-Przytyk recalls a young girl of about fifteen who sat all day on her bed and cried. It was clear “she would not win the fight for life. She would perish for sure. Cruelty would squash her; she would not be able to resist it. She was not physically strong, and had no experience, no meanness, no selfishness” (18). Even Nomberg-Przytyk admits contemplating suicide as an answer, and had it not been for a few helping hands, her demise may have come premature. Still the struggle was a never ending one, and called to each prisoner consistently and unapologetically. Through mortification and merciless, uncalled for beatings, each prisoner was wrung, slowly rinsing away ounce by ounce every drop of hope. The system was indeed designed to do this by means of using violence, aggression, and starvation of every human condition- both physical and psychological. Nomberg-Przytyk’s depiction of when every new prisoner’s hair was shorn from their heads and bodies was one of the most insightful accounts depicted of the seemingly senseless, brutal logic implemented in Auschwitz, the type that went out of its way to torment prisoners. It wasn’t enough that the women were going to have their hair cut, but shorn, on top of making each one open their legs to have the body hair removed (in front of one another, as well as SS men) as well. She recalls, “Once again, we were sitting on the benches, naked, the hair on our heads, what was left of it, cut in layers, all of us hunched over from the cold…I did not recognize anybody…once upon a time each one of us was capable of awakening feelings of love and affection…each one of us had some value, her own world of intimate dreams and desires” (14). Dreams and desires were now focused in a different world, and if life was decided as the goal, then the following step was understanding how to survive and adapt in the brutal, and at many times senselessly brutal, environment.
This was not Sara Nomberg-Przytyk’s first visit to a concentration camp, as she states early and throughout the book. Being subjected to rationed amounts of food, having less than adequate clothing or shelter to sustain oneself during a vicious winter, were all tactics she understood designed to weaken and rob the individual of human dignity, of personality, in essence to detach one from himself/herself. However the code at Auschwitz, or rather the logic, went far beyond detaining the prisoners or robbing one of his own identity or freedoms. It was the idea of disconnecting ones heart and intellect from themselves, until they could no longer defend, so as to invoke despair, hopelessness, and total loss of the soul. It was torture beyond the physical realm, a system established with the intention to bring forth from the prisoners selfishness, meanness, among advocating other less admirable qualities. It was a logic which revolved around the idea of turning those who chose ‘life’ into a primitive form of living, thinking, and acting, a type of personality who would not question striking an old woman’s life down so as to secure her own. As Nomberg-Przytyk recalls, “All around me raged an animalistic struggle for existence, a battle for a little bit of watery soup, even for a little bit of water” (22). In short, for the prisoners it was survival of the fittest- ‘Step or be stepped on’.
Upon passing the gates at Auschwitz, Sara Nomberg-Przytyk (among other newly arrived prisoners) entered an encampment like none other she had experienced before, being subjected to a very different mentality and set of rules. It was the ‘survival of the fittest’ ideology, and for those who could not adapt to the environment, who were to weak to continue, an example was made from them as “Every morning the sztubowa pulled dead women out of the beds…stripped them naked…dragged them through the whole block, and heaved them into the mud” (22). The choice then became clear: lose yourself, as the rest of them have been lost and fight, or parish. Either apply the new ideology required to survive, or reject the logic and continue to struggle, possibly die. Once the realization was made, a decision soon needed to follow for every person who found themselves in Auschwitz.
Justifying the actions which took place within the Auschwitz concentration camp is heart wrenching. The struggle for life in such an environment reduces actions to primitive, instinctual ones. Hunt, or be hunted. Stay hungry, or lay back and be eaten. Although shameful, I do not indict the functionaries for compromising their morals and acting completely unethically: it was out of fear and defense of their own lives. There is no validation for the explicit absurdities depicted in Nomberg-Przytyk’s accounts other than the fact that these were women looking out for their own interests, in hope that they too might survive this awful place, even if it meant at the expense of the girl’s life next to her. In the end we can take all this with us, to serve as a testimony and account of what happens when people are subjected to an environment where ones life is in jeopardy- and the will to survive overcomes the will to preserve the foundation of ones principles.
Ok. I hope that was insightful! And again, if its sunday and you have nothing to do, take a trip to barnes and nobles and check this out
Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land, by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk. Translated by Roslyn Hirsch. Edited by Eli Pfefferkorn and David H. Hirsch. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina Press 1985, xii + 185 pp., ISBN 0-8078-4160-9.
One of the benefits of now being 21 is that I can pursue the wine connoisseur within me...minus the fact i'm probably gonna be carded for the next 20 years bc I look like a 9 year old- i'm pumped!
ite wonderful. Mondavi has really pulled off producing a value priced wine that tastes and feels more like some of the higher end Sauvignons that sell in the mid twenties and higher.
ite wonderful. Mondavi has really pulled off producing a value priced wine that tastes and feels more like some of the higher end Sauvignons that sell in the mid twenties and higher.
