Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. Discussing their daily activities in the concentration camps, their physical and psychological problems that they encountered, how the people behaved, and our own personal reflections on the situation.

Survival in Auschwitz

Auschwitz, Poland is a concentration camp built 150 miles outside Warsaw in May 1940. The commander is Rudolf Hoss and is staffed by SS Death's Head units. Primo Levi, a 24-year-old man who has been a prisoner here since early 1944. He studied chemistry at the University of Turin and graduated in 1941. He moved to northern Italy to join the resistance against Benito Mussolini but was captured in December 1943 and sent to Auschwitz.

He tells us it was a four-day train trip in crammed boxcars with nothing to eat or drink, midnight arrival, the first of many summary interrogations that led to either a slavish existence or swift death. Clothes taken,...
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