CONCENTRATION CAMP BEHAVIOR.
Term Paper ID:25174
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Essay Subject:
Examines behavior, good & evil of Nazis & prisoners in Tadeusz Borowski's [This Way for the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen], Primo Levi's [Survival in Auschwitz] & Tzvetan Todorov's [Facing the Extreme].... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines behavior, good & evil of Nazis & prisoners in Tadeusz Borowski's [This Way for the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen], Primo Levi's [Survival in Auschwitz] & Tzvetan Todorov's [Facing the Extreme].
Paper Introduction:
The Nazi concentration camps of World War II were, intentionally or not, a social experiment in which human beings were subjected to extraordinary circumstances. The behavior of camp inmates may reveal something about human nature, or what happens when a conventional way of life, with its attendant social institutions and habits, is impossible. To determine whether the camps do in fact provide insight into human nature, three books will be discussed and compared: “Survival in Auschwitz” by Primo Levi, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” by Tadeusz Borowski, and “Facing the Extreme” by Tzvetan Todorov.
Primo Levi lived in Auschwitz for ten months during his youth; he recounts his personal experiences in the book “Survival in Auschwitz.” Beyond the motivation of describing the atrocities he wi
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nature or what happens when a conventional way oflife with compared Survival in Auschwitz byPrimo Levi This Way for the motivation of describing the atrocities he witnessed atAuschwitz Levi implies how various individuals survived the camp among theprisoners themselves In the best cases they possess a unaware of the prices of the moment Some of at the bottom this done they exchange it for exposing them to public derision ii Food was Civilian workers encountered in the course of laboringtogether at a iv Everything the prisoners did when they could help who will not willingly renounce aslice of that survival meant engaging inpractices that were eat only what one was supposed to eat saved were those who found every hour against exhaustion hunger the ways devised and put into effect by superior individuals made of the stuff not makesense and are not effective in the new environment leaving only the barest routines conduct once every civilized institution is taken away and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are basis for most of the inmates' incarceration they didnot choose xii among others Borowski does the same in his book accounts of actual occurrences However the stories of the other prisoners he does what he to make friends with powerful people of him At the Pawiak prison he stand on the shoulders of men new arrivals xvi They harvest all of the foodthat is gaschambers The new arrivals generally do not know at the train station keep the truth from them the trucks are waiting to takepeople away to the trucks denies that she is a little girl with one in a way that goesbeyond the need for food One man's place he would probably do the would be a little like holding somebody's hand you prisoners'dependence on goods from new arrivals leads them to cremo' transports I say spitefully run out of people Henri replies Stop of showing the ruthlessness ofcamp life he he did not commit and takes a evenlike xxv While taking a brief rest from to be a code of conduct in place amidst all he spits blood xxvii A single incommand xxviii How the prisoners and concludes that evil coexists side by side Lagerfuhrer of Birkenau was directly responsible him but never missed his turn on the incoming railway monsters were also capableof humane behavior Todorov behaved much as the other and actual perpetration Among the prisoners for them to acquire xxxi One prisoner describes how dominates moral life one loses a sense of compassion for xxxiii Yet there are just and wasexecuted as a result never have made it without the help of those that life in the camps obeyed administration was not merely licit but admirable on the kept an assassin from carrying out the camp environment demonstrate Todorov's view nor evil or else they are both There were countless instances of altruism and evil committed of the camp Yet there were account suggest that theconcept of survival Thus it appearsmore likely that there is a compiled writings from numerous victims and survivors These writings for the most part while addition Todorov has made to the discussing human nature and thecamps one must that human nature is extremely complexand little senseto generalize that human nature is For the great bulk of humanity the foregoing of human beings will look first to theirown survival Auschwitz New York Simon Schuster Todorov Tzvetan Facing the Extreme ix Ibid x Ibid xi xix Ibid xx Ibid xxi Ibid Ibid xxxiv Ibid xxxv Ibid xxxvi human beings were subjected toextraordinary circumstances The behavior of camp the camps do in fact provide insight into months during his youth herecounts his personal experiences in the aspects of the mind i a market economy of goods and servicestraded between morning in the senseless hope of a to a methodical examination with nerves are exhausted or until some victim catching them teeth The nurses of theinfirmary themselves engaged in of tobacco which was in made his rounds in a building tending in this manner honestly engineer Kardos solves to follow its rules and not adapt themselves to the conditions of the and takingadvantage of the right situations One has to rivals to sharpen one's wits to renunciation of any part of one's own moral and social habits that onesnormally embraces begin to break one were stillliving at a normal life all the most obvious and facile deduction that to be drawn is that was the tendency ofpeople to categorize one another in national origin Levi talksabout a Borowski presents here a collection of stories inspired by hisexperiences any cost Borowski's protagonist Tadeusz To accomplish this theprisoners know that it is necessary be cruel to other prisoners Witek torturing Jews xiv A t the camp of unloading new arrivals from the trains and thus the operation is that the menalso have to throw forced to perform hard laborfirst before their eventual executions The of charity xvii Yet some new woman wanting to avoid the trucks andsensing that are shocked by her degenerate of corpses xix The prisoners food boots and eating utensils xx Observing this would still believe that something would surely happen along friend Henri to get him a silk shirt and someshoes misfortune of others like them And what packages no more beatings You even write letters blasted camp All of us themselves for the welfare of others Becker an old man bound back to work beforethe S S steals a bit of mush from carry out their ownjustice rather than In his book Facing the Extreme torturer Wilhelm Boger sometimes helped the from Terezin who had been marked for the gas chamber of giving individual patients the best of care in between of among others Leviand Solzhenitsyn he suggests that had he feels it necessary to draw there were prisoners whobemoaned the less frequent transports of new to lickhis soup bowl and think only about next person one might instead further his former prostitute who had made a livingwith sadistic practices friends thrown in a cell withher xxxv Most of challenged the morality ofmost prisoners there was nevertheless a tenuous may have been different but they most of the time was severely punished Murder for human lives xxxvii The shifting and inverting of conventional to speak of human nature in absolute terms regardinghuman nature if one is to could to survive Clearly to actexclusively in a or ended up perishing without havingtaken advantage modified In addition there were those rarely or studyingthe moral universe of the camps by Todorov's own intellectual analyses in an emotional rendering of the moral challengesto which the on the moral life of the Nazis who the fragmentation that existed in the personalities ofthe presentedin the three books a conclusion must also simplistic to suggest that conclude that human nature isvaried and diverse in its response Tadeusz This Way for the Gas Ladies Ibid iii Ibid iv Ibid v Ibid York Penguin Books xiv Ibid xv Ibid xxix Tzvetan Todorov Facing the Extreme New York The Nazi concentration camps of World War II were its attendant social institutions and Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by TadeuszBorowski and Facing the Extreme in his preface that he hopes to furnishdocumentation and concludes that a certain amount of pragmatism miserable half-ration of bread which with painful effort these with savage patience acquire with their half-ration two pints bread and the bread for not the only item of exchange clothing was traded nearby factory were brought into the economy it was with thepurpose of survival Trade bread to soothe the torment of those not always honest According to him vi He juxtaposestwo groups of people the drowned and ways to endure by making cold and the resulting inertia to resist enemies us in order not to die as many as there of martyrs and saints vii Levi's interpretation of what he The Nazis created aworld in which for discovering what wasessential to survival that the Haftling is consequently nothing but a reduced to silence viii One institution to perceive one another as equals but This Way for the Gas Ladies are similar to Levi's memories of actual events andconvey can to prolong his life camp officials and prisonersalike to accept jobs became washroom attendant a kind of helper to Kronschmidt who have influence xv Tadeusz lives brought on the trains and when possible the clothing that some of their numbers as long as possible this is described the gas chambers that the trucks are waiting the mother of her child xviii The S S men leg still alive and conscious being roughly old man knowingly on his way to death in theoven same I think that even see xxi Tadeusz himself like the other inmates hope that newtransports of prisoners continue to Can't you see how much easier life is becoming talking nonsense They can't run out of people or often portrays the prisoners in a different light There arenumerous beating in theplace of an old Greek xxiv working Tadeusz spots an S S man approaching and warns the thieveryand selfishness certain acts against other prisoners are severely man istrampled to death by an managed to be so ruthless at times and so with good often inthe same individual He describes for the death of thousands one day intervened platform where the selections that euphemism for on-the-spot takes this as evidence that most human beingsare capable had intheir place xxx Yet Todorov does not present this Todorov cites numerous examples of selfishnessand while a fellow inmate bled to death the suffering of others and no longer offers the help as many instances of kindness and xxxiv Another woman forgot her own around them that cooperation and generosity from others were only the law of the other hand stealing from a cruel and vicious assignments Bearing false witness could become that both goodand evil exist within every individual and society atonce selfishness and altruism are equally innate xxxviii This by the sameindividuals depending on circumstances Borowski's Tadeusz and even those who declined to adapt to the shifting moraluniverse of good and evil coexisting in continuum of human behaviors and responses tochanging environments Todorov's book speak of a wide range of reactions Borowski's stories and Levi'smemoirs tend to philosophy genre ofsurvivor accounts is the inclusion of the oppressors discuss all of the humans who were present in almost impossible to pin down Yet in the inherently either good or evil may well be true but clearly there are individuals then when possible to assisting New York Henry Holt and Company i Primo Levi Ibid xii Ibid xiii Tadeusz Borowski This Way for the xxii Ibid xxiii Ibid xxiv Ibid xxv Ibid Ibid xxxvii Ibid xxxviii Ibid inmates may revealsomething about human human nature three books will be discussed and book Survival in Auschwitz Beyond the To thisend he provides true stories of the prisoners and the camp administration and chance to make an advantageous bargain with some ingenuous person a view to extracting the few pieces of potato lying in the act inflicts on them a severe lesson the sale of spoons which were in greatdemand iii shorter supplyoutside the camp than within it to wounded feet inexchange for bread there is no one theproblem of living v For the most part Levi implies regulations to do asone was told to camp and submitted todeath The second group the fight against the current to battle every day and build up one's patience strengthen one's will-power Many were world was conceded only to very few down The old ways of living do superfluous elements of human life wereremoved man is fundamentally brutal egoistic and stupid in his in the face of driving necessity and terms of ethnicity Although ethnicdifference was the Galician ix the Greeks x a Dutchman xi and Poles at Auschwitz and Dachau not is a prisoner who behaves much likemost to organize ways of getting food andgoods nevertheless refused to let fate get the better you are not likely to trip if you having accessto the belongings of the live human beings onto trucks bound for the men of Canada who greetthem arrivals seem to figure out that her having a child will somehow condemn her to behavior but they have no problem watching are obsessed with materials objects another prisoner remarks toTadeusz that in the old the way Holding a package the perforated kind with a double sole xxii The if there aren't any more home One hears all kind of talk and dammit they'll live on what they bring xxiii Despite Borowski's obvious intention Ivan a friend ofTadeusz confesses to a crime for the ovens whom Tadeusz does not man notices that they've slacked off xxvi There seems Tadeusz he is beaten and kicked until hand the man over to the American soldiers who are Todorov undertakes an analysis of moral life in thecamps Jews who worked under him Johann Schwarzhuber who as Dr Frank took special care of the Jews around selections xxix These people who have been condemned as the Nazis and their victimsexchanged places each group would have a line between potentialto commit evil prisoners which meant lessfood and other items his next meal xxxii When the survival instinct totally decline if it meant relief from one's own suffering refused to strike another prisoner the camp survivors mentioned in Todorov's book claimthat they could thread of humanity andsolidarity running throughout It is not true still existed Stealing from the example could be a moral act if it values into ones thatworked in as forpeople they are by nature neither good use the concentration camps as a reference moral or altruistic way meant certain death in the harshenvironment These the drowned in Levi's never displayed signsof altruism but worked purely for their own While he never experienced the campsfirsthand he has The book is aphilosophical text camp prisoners were subjected Arguably the most valuable are theirenemies but Todorov recognizes that in Nazis it is difficult to deny be drawn While it makes bothoppositions exist in the same individual to extraordinary circumstances in thecamps as elsewhere the majority and Gentlemen New York Penguin Books Levi Primo Survival in vi Ibid vii Ibid viii Ibid Ibid xvi Ibid xvii Ibid xviii Ibid Henry Holt andCompany xxx Ibid xxxi Ibid xxxii Ibid xxxiii intentionally ornot a social experiment in which habits is impossible Todetermine whether by Tzvetan Todorov Primo Levi lived in Auschwitz for ten for a quiet study of certain was necessary to thestruggle Levi paints a picture of they have saved since the of soup which once in their possession they subject another two pints to denaturalize and so on until their as weretobacco shoes and even gold fillings from as well particularly in the exchange took on an unconventional nature at times aswhen a man numbed sores which bleed atevery step all day the easiest way tobe destroyed by the camp was the saved the first being thosewho did the right friends striking the right bargains and have no pity for are different human characters Survival without saw at Auschwitz was that underextremely challenging circumstances the morals it was utterly impossible to behave as though We do not believe in man without inhibitions We believe rather that the only conclusion that persisted inside the camp maintained aconsciousness of each individual's ethnic or andGentlemen referring to Greeks and Poles and others xiii UnlikeLevi the same theme of survival at anddecrease his daily suffering as much as possible that may require them to who together with one Ukrainian used to amuse himself in Canada a section of the camp that enjoys theprivilege and shoes aswell A particularly unpleasant drawback of willbe immediately executed while others will be as the only permissible form for those whoare not strong enough to work One at thestation as well as the Canada prisoners carted around and thrown on top ofa pile prepares nonetheless a package to bring with him containing if I was being led to the oven I clings to material objectsfor comfort He asks his arrive forgetting that they areprospering from the around here no limit on we'll starve to death in this instances of cooperation among the prisoners and of prisonerssacrificing Tadeusz continually gives part of his foodration to his fellow prisoners to get punishedby the prisoners themselves When Becker angry mob who prefer to kind atothers is explained by Tzvetan Todorov as fragmentation particularly unlikely inconsistencies inthe behavior of Nazi personnel The to save the lives of sixty-eight boys death sentences took place Even Mengele was capable of good as well as evil Citing the work as reason to excusethe Nazis rather weary cynicism Echoing Borowski's stories before his eyes he continued one normally would Rather than aid the self-sacrificeon the part of the prisoners A suffering whileconcentrating on ways to reliev that of two essential to one'ssurvival xxxvi Thus while life in the camps jungle The rules of camp society fellow prisoner especially bread was an abomination and a virtuous act if it helped save He suggests that itmakes little sense conclusion appears to be the most sensible one to draw PrimoLevi himself took advantage when they the camps who chose to each individual must be reexaminedand is more comprehensive than the other two in to the camp experience and are supplemented only informally and occasionally The latter twoare primarily interested in his study Borowskiand Levi touch only briefly the society When he points out interest of integrating the information that is self-serving or altruistic it is for whomit is not Therefore it appears safest to their neighbors in theirsurvival Endnotes BibliographyBorowski Survival in Auschwitz New York Simon Schuster ii Gas Ladies and Gentlemen New xxvi Ibid xxvii Ibid xxviii nature or what happens when a conventional way oflife with compared Survival in Auschwitz byPrimo Levi This Way for the motivation of describing the atrocities he witnessed atAuschwitz Levi implies how various individuals survived the camp among theprisoners themselves In the best cases they possess a unaware of the prices of the moment Some of at the bottom this done they exchange it for exposing them to public derision ii Food was Civilian workers encountered in the course of laboringtogether at a iv Everything the prisoners did when they could help who will not willingly renounce aslice of that survival meant engaging inpractices that were eat only what one was supposed to eat saved were those who found every hour against exhaustion hunger the ways devised and put into effect by superior individuals made of the stuff not makesense and are not effective in the new environment leaving only the barest routines conduct once every civilized institution is taken away and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are basis for most of the inmates' incarceration they didnot choose xii among others Borowski does the same in his book accounts of actual occurrences However the stories of the other prisoners he does what he to make friends with powerful people of him At the Pawiak prison he stand on the shoulders of men new arrivals xvi They harvest all of the foodthat is gaschambers The new arrivals generally do not know at the train station keep the truth from them the trucks are waiting to takepeople away to the trucks denies that she is a little girl with one in a way that goesbeyond the need for food One man's place he would probably do the would be a little like holding somebody's hand you prisoners'dependence on goods from new arrivals leads them to cremo' transports I say spitefully run out of people Henri replies Stop of showing the ruthlessness ofcamp life he he did not commit and takes a evenlike xxv While taking a brief rest from to be a code of conduct in place amidst all he spits blood xxvii A single incommand xxviii How the prisoners and concludes that evil coexists side by side Lagerfuhrer of Birkenau was directly responsible him but never missed his turn on the incoming railway monsters were also capableof humane behavior Todorov behaved much as the other and actual perpetration Among the prisoners for them to acquire xxxi One prisoner describes how dominates moral life one loses a sense of compassion for xxxiii Yet there are just and wasexecuted as a result never have made it without the help of those that life in the camps obeyed administration was not merely licit but admirable on the kept an assassin from carrying out the camp environment demonstrate Todorov's view nor evil or else they are both There were countless instances of altruism and evil committed of the camp Yet there were account suggest that theconcept of survival Thus it appearsmore likely that there is a compiled writings from numerous victims and survivors These writings for the most part while addition Todorov has made to the discussing human nature and thecamps one must that human nature is extremely complexand little senseto generalize that human nature is For the great bulk of humanity the foregoing of human beings will look first to theirown survival Auschwitz New York Simon Schuster Todorov Tzvetan Facing the Extreme ix Ibid x Ibid xi xix Ibid xx Ibid xxi Ibid Ibid xxxiv Ibid xxxv Ibid xxxvi human beings were subjected toextraordinary circumstances The behavior of camp the camps do in fact provide insight into months during his youth herecounts his personal experiences in the aspects of the mind i a market economy of goods and servicestraded between morning in the senseless hope of a to a methodical examination with nerves are exhausted or until some victim catching them teeth The nurses of theinfirmary themselves engaged in of tobacco which was in made his rounds in a building tending in this manner honestly engineer Kardos solves to follow its rules and not adapt themselves to the conditions of the and takingadvantage of the right situations One has to rivals to sharpen one's wits to renunciation of any part of one's own moral and social habits that onesnormally embraces begin to break one were stillliving at a normal life all the most obvious and facile deduction that to be drawn is that was the tendency ofpeople to categorize one another in national origin Levi talksabout a Borowski presents here a collection of stories inspired by hisexperiences any cost Borowski's protagonist Tadeusz To accomplish this theprisoners know that it is necessary be cruel to other prisoners Witek torturing Jews xiv A t the camp of unloading new arrivals from the trains and thus the operation is that the menalso have to throw forced to perform hard laborfirst before their eventual executions The of charity xvii Yet some new woman wanting to avoid the trucks andsensing that are shocked by her degenerate of corpses xix The prisoners food boots and eating utensils xx Observing this would still believe that something would surely happen along friend Henri to get him a silk shirt and someshoes misfortune of others like them And what packages no more beatings You even write letters blasted camp All of us themselves for the welfare of others Becker an old man bound back to work beforethe S S steals a bit of mush from carry out their ownjustice rather than In his book Facing the Extreme torturer Wilhelm Boger sometimes helped the from Terezin who had been marked for the gas chamber of giving individual patients the best of care in between of among others Leviand Solzhenitsyn he suggests that had he feels it necessary to draw there were prisoners whobemoaned the less frequent transports of new to lickhis soup bowl and think only about next person one might instead further his former prostitute who had made a livingwith sadistic practices friends thrown in a cell withher xxxv Most of challenged the morality ofmost prisoners there was nevertheless a tenuous may have been different but they most of the time was severely punished Murder for human lives xxxvii The shifting and inverting of conventional to speak of human nature in absolute terms regardinghuman nature if one is to could to survive Clearly to actexclusively in a or ended up perishing without havingtaken advantage modified In addition there were those rarely or studyingthe moral universe of the camps by Todorov's own intellectual analyses in an emotional rendering of the moral challengesto which the on the moral life of the Nazis who the fragmentation that existed in the personalities ofthe presentedin the three books a conclusion must also simplistic to suggest that conclude that human nature isvaried and diverse in its response Tadeusz This Way for the Gas Ladies Ibid iii Ibid iv Ibid v Ibid York Penguin Books xiv Ibid xv Ibid xxix Tzvetan Todorov Facing the Extreme New York
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