Examples Of Teamwork In Survival In Auschwitz By Primo Levi

Community and Teamwork in Holocaust Concentration Camps

The social relationships and communal structure of the camps were essential to the physical and moral survival of the Jewish people interned in Nazi concentration camps. Their unique social bonds and culture reinforced their humanity in the face of Nazi brutality. In Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz”, the ex-prisoner describes an experience similar to other witness accounts. First, he stresses the importance of his comrades to his survival for both moral support and mutual benefit. Second, he emphasizes the acts of kindness and sacrifice that kept his humanity alive while surrounded by barbarity. The communities in Holocaust concentration camps worked much like any effective group.

For instance, an exchange market allowed for trade to occur for the mutual benefit of the larger camp. The exchange market enabled prisoners to secure items that in many cases allowed for their survival. Rather than becoming a conflict point over scant resources, the exchange became a rallying point for the community. In his article about human reciprocity in concentration camps, Shamai Davidson states, “Life was intensely social. Scattered among the detailed descriptions of horrors reported in the eyewitness accounts are many examples of mutual help, of continual sharing and, in some cases, of an intensely disciplined underground organization based on teamwork and the creation of a social network” (Davidson). The underground organization he describes is similar to exchange market Levi depicts in his novel, “The Market is always very active. Although every exchange (in fact, every form of possession) is explicitly forbidden, and although frequent swoops of Kapos or Blockäste send merchants, customers and curious periodically flying, nevertheless, the northeast corner of the Lager (significantly the corner furthest from the SS huts) is permanently occupied by a tumultuous throng, in the open during the summer, in a wash-room during the winter, as soon as the squads return from work” (Levi 99). Although the market was

Throughout all the terror and dehumanization the Jews faced, their real human relationships with others were what kept them truly living. While the Nazis attempted to turn the Jewish people against each other and diminish them to animals, the basic human relationships formed between prisoners, and their continual acts of kindness were the true act of Nazi rebellion and what kept them sane. While “Help was often of a minimal and/or symbolic nature… ability to retain part of his personality and self-respect, and this is given considerable importance in relation to the capacity for survival” (Davidson). The dignity that the Jewish prisoners fought to maintain came from their inclusion and importance in their social group. Therefore, while they attempted to, the Nazis could not steal their dignity. Their self-worth was derived from their community; from their shared languages, religion and other cultural ties, which helped them greatly. They were not just a motley collection of people thrown together, but a group identified as God’s Chosen People, connected by a history of suffering from the Romans to the Czars. Primo attributes the survival of his humanity to the Italian civilian Lorenzo. Lorenzo illegally sneaks Primo extra bread and soup in return for nothing, but just as