Memory, Shame, Communication, And The Gray Zone In Primo Levi’s The Droened And The Saved

Intro

The book The Droened and the saved was written by holocaust survive Primo Levi in 1986. Levi was sent to Auschwits concentration camp in Germany. Levi is in his mid twenties. His book is made from eight essays dealing with memory, the gray zone, shame, communication, useless violence, stereotypes, and letters from the Germany. Levi was both an Italian and Jewish born in 1919 to a liberal Jewish family. Levi was sent to the camp in January 18, 1945. He hand one sister and his mother was well educated. This book is special because Levi ponders and describes what happened mentally to the prisoners, nazis, and the public and why it happened. Levi considers the survives of the consontration camps as saved and the ones who did not survive the drowned. In 1987, Levi committed suicide by falling from three stories because he was till suffering for more than fourty years with the trama he indured during his time at auschwits. The five most important themes in this book are memory, shame, communication, and the gray zone.

Memory

The first chapter in the book is on his memories. He not only described his memory, but he also the memory of the other surviver’s memory, Nazi officer’s memory, and the memories of the people living in the world outside the concentration camps. He aknowledges that the memories that people have are not always accurate. “An extreme case of the distortion of the memory of a committed guilty act is found in its suppression. Here, too, the borderline between good and bad faith can be vague; behind the 'I don't know' and 'I do not remember' that one hears in courtrooms there is sometimes the precise intent to lie, but at other times it is a fossilized lie, rigidified in a formula. ” He further explains that this is caused by aging and trauma. The nazi’s coped later in life by suppressing the memories they had of the things they did to other people. “The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to becomeerased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features. Judges know this very well: almost never do two eyewitnesses of the same event describe it in the same way and with the same words, even if the event is recent and if neither of them has a personal interest in distorting it. ”

Shame

I think that Levi’s third chapter of shame is the most interesting. In this chapter, Levi describes the shame the survivers felt for living while so many of the other inmates were killed by the officers or dying of natural cause by the unsanitary living conditions and labor requirements. Once the inmates were liberated the didn’t feel freedom they felt incredible shame remembering all the dying they witnessed. Some fell in a major depressive state lasting years after being freed. Ultimamly, many of the prisoners were too depressed and resulted in killing themselves, simalerly to Levi’s death. I found the experience he described in this chapter about finding water. While cleaning he found a waterpipe that had a small amount of water remaining. In the camps they had little water, so when finding water was a treasure. He calls his friend and they share the little amount of water left. While returning to their peers they pass another friend on the way. The friend could see they had found water by their mouths being less dusty than uthers. Levi describes the shame he felt for not helping others find the water. “Neither more nor less numerous than in any other human group, felt remorse, shame and pain for the misdeeds that others and not they had committed, and in which they felt involved, because they sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species — we, in short — had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act. ”

Communication

In the chapter about communication, Levi discusses the language barriers in the camp. The concentration camps had inmates not just from Germany, but many countries. Because of this, there were many different languages. If you were in the camp and most of the people around you spoke different languages, how lonely would you feel? Another effect of having multiple people speaking different languages is that the inmates could not obey the Nazis because they did not understand what was being asked of them. When they did not listen to the officers they would get killed. “Except for cases of pathological incapacity, one can and must communicate, and thereby contribute in a useful and easy way to the peace of others and oneself, because silence, the absence of signals, is itself a signal, but an ambiguous one, and ambiguity generates anxiety and suspicion. To say that it is impossible to communicate is false; one always can. ” Another effect of many people speaking different languages in the camps is not being able to speak to your neighbors at all causing emotional and social isolation of prisioners. Also, many of the prisoners were separated and sent to different camps from their friend and family. Levi explains in this chapter of the most common language in his camp was Yiddish. In the camp the prisoners who spoke Yiddish were “higher” in the hiarchy of the camp. Levi, being Italian did not speek Yiddish, was socially rejected which isolated him even more.

Gray Zone

In this chapter, levi describes the black and white thinking of the Nazi party. An example of this style of thinking is the Nazis sepporatin the general public into good and bad. They did this using the Nuremberg Law, which is the Protection of German Blood and prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. He also challenges the act of glossing over the truth that we don’t like. The fact that we as people are always separating each other into groups of “us against them”. The people who were most likely to survive were those who worked the better jobs and got special rewards for being “spies”

Useless Violence

In this chapter I think Levi does a great job of explaining the cruelty. Levi describes the methotical and calculated killings of the prisoners in the camp. “The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero”. In this chapter he explains that the prisoner’s education and social status had a major role in their survival. If they were educated they had a greater likely hood of surviving and the less educated had less of a chance. That being said, the prisonerswho were less “intellectual” prisoners also had a higher rate of survival. They typically were more willing to comply because they were less curious than the other prisoners. This worked out in their favor in the long run. Another topic Levi brings up is religion. He origionally went into the camp unreligious. Once he was freed he found his religion. He even stated that he believes that religion actually helped the prisioners survived. He believes that the religion gave them hope.

Conclusion

Primo Levi’s The Drowned and The Saved book written in 1986 discribing his experience in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He uses only nine chapters to describe his experiences and what he learned in the camp. All nin chapters memory, the grayzone, shame, communication, useless violence, the intellectual in Auschwitz, stereotypes, letters from Germans. I believe that the five main themes in this book are memory, shame, the gray zone, communication, and useless violence. Levi also warns in the conclusion of the book that because the holocaust happened before, it can happen again.