by Primo Levi
The nurse indicates my ribs to the other man, as if I were a cadaver in an anatomy class. He points to my swollen eyelids and cheeks and my thin neck, he bends over and presses on my tibia with his thumb, and shows the other the deep impression that his finger leaves in the pale flesh, as if it were wax.
I wish I had never spoken to the Pole: I feel as if I had never in all my life suffered a more atrocious insult. The nurse, meanwhile, seems to have finished his demonstration, in his language, which I do not understand, and which to me sounds terrible. He turns to me and, in broken German, charitably, tells me the conclusion: “Du Jude, kaputt. Du schnell Krematorium, fertig.” (You Jew, done for. You soon for the crematorium, finished.)
More hours pass before all the patients have been seen, given a shirt, and had their information recorded. I, as usual, am last. Someone in brand-new striped clothes asks me where I was born, what profession I practiced “as a civilian,” if I had children, what diseases I had had, a whole series of questions. What use can they be? Is this a complicated rehearsal to make fools of us? Could this be the hospital? They make us stand naked and ask us questions.
At last, even for me the door is opened, and I can enter the dormitory.
Here, as everywhere, there are three tiers of bunks, in three rows throughout the barrack, separated by two narrow corridors. There are 150 bunks, and about 250 patients; so there are two in most of the bunks. The patients in the upper bunks, squashed against the ceiling, can hardly sit up; they lean out, curious to see today’s new arrivals. It’s the most interesting moment of the day, for one always finds some acquaintances. I am assigned to bunk number 10—a miracle! It’s empty! I stretch out with delight; it’s the first time since I entered the camp that I’ve had a bunk all to myself. Despite my hunger, within ten minutes I am asleep.
The life of Ka-Be is a life of limbo. The physical discomforts are relatively few, apart from hunger and the suffering inherent in illness. It’s not cold, there’s no work to do, and, unless you commit some grave fault, you aren’t beaten.
Reveille is at 4 a.m., even for patients. You have to make your bed and wash, but there’s not much hurry nor is it very strict. The bread is distributed at half past five, and one can cut it comfortably into thin slices and eat it lying down in complete peace; then one can fall asleep again until the soup is distributed at midday. Until about four it’s Mittagsruhe, afternoon rest time; then there is often the medical examination and bandaging, and you have to climb down from the bunk, take off your shirt, and line up in front of the doctor. The evening ration is also served in bed, after which, at nine, all the lights are turned off except for the shaded lamp of the night guard, and there is silence.
. . . And for the first time since I entered the camp reveille catches me in a deep sleep, and waking up is a return from nothingness. When the bread is distributed, one can hear far away, outside the windows, in the dark air, the band beginning to play: our healthy comrades are leaving in their squads for work.
From Ka-Be you can’t hear the music well. The beating of the bass drum and the cymbals reaches us continuously and monotonously, but on this weft the musical phrases weave a pattern only intermittently, according to the wind’s caprices. From our beds we exchange looks, because we all feel that this music is infernal.
The tunes are few, a dozen, the same ones every day, morning and evening: marches and popular songs dear to every German. They lie engraved in our minds and will be the last thing in the Lager that we forget: they are the voice of the Lager, the perceptible expression of its geometric madness, of the resolution of others to annihilate us first as men, in order to kill us slowly afterward.
When this music plays, we know that our comrades, outside in the fog, are marching like automatons; their souls are dead and the music drives them, as the wind drives the dead leaves, and takes the place of their will. There is no longer any will: every beat becomes a step, a reflexive contraction of exhausted muscles. The Germans have succeeded in this. Their prisoners are ten thousand, and are a single gray machine; they are precisely determined; they do not think and they do not desire, they walk.
During the marches of departure and return, the SS are always present. Who could deny them their right to watch this choreography of their creation, the dance of dead men, squad after squad, leaving the fog to enter the fog? What more concrete proof of their victory?
Even those in Ka-Be recognize this departure and return from work, the hypnosis of the interminable rhythm, which kills thought and deadens pain; they have experienced it themselves and they will experience it again. But we had to escape from the enchantment, hear the music from the outside, as happened in Ka-Be, and as we think back to it now, after liberation and rebirth, without obeying it, without enduring it, to understand what it was, for what carefully considered reason the Germans created this monstrous rite, and why even today, when one of those innocent songs comes to mind, our blood freezes in our veins and we are aware that to have returned from Auschwitz was no small fortune.
I have two neighbors in the adjoining bunk. They lie down all day and all night, side by side, skin against skin, crossed like the Pisces of the zodiac, so that each has the other’s feet beside his head.
One is Walter Bonn, a Dutchman, civilized and quite educated. He sees that I have nothing to cut my bread with and lends me his knife, and then offers to sell it to me for half a ration of bread. I discuss the price and turn it down—I think that I will always find someone to lend me a knife here in Ka-Be, while outside it costs only a third of a ration. Walter is by no means less courteous because of this, and at midday, after eating his soup, he wipes his spoon with his lips (which is a good rule before lending it, so as to clean it and not to let any traces of soup that may still be clinging to it go to waste) and spontaneously offers it to me.
“What are you suffering from, Walter?” “Körperschwäche,” progressive physical decline. The worst disease: it cannot be cured, and it’s very dangerous to enter Ka-Be with such a diagnosis. If it hadn’t been for the edema of his ankles (and he shows them to me), which makes it impossible for him to march to work, he would have been very cautious about reporting sick.
My ideas about this kind of danger are still quite confused. Everybody speaks about it indirectly, by allusions, and when I ask some questions they look at me and fall silent.
Is it true what one hears of selections, of gas, of the crematorium?
Crematorium. The other one, Walter’s bed companion, wakes, startled, and sits up: Who’s talking about the crematorium? What’s happening? Can’t a sleeping person be left in peace? He is a Polish Jew, albino, with a gaunt, good-natured face, no longer young. His name is Schmulek, he’s a smith. Walter tells him briefly.
So, “der Italeyner” does not believe in selections. Schmulek wants to speak German but speaks Yiddish; I understand him with difficulty, only because he wants to be understood. He silences Walter with a gesture, he will take care of convincing me:
“Show me your number: you are 174517. This numbering began eighteen months ago and applies to Auschwitz and the subcamps. There are now ten thousand of us here at Buna-Monowitz; perhaps thirty thousand between Auschwitz and Birkenau. Wo sind die Andere? Where are the others?”
“Perhaps transferred to other camps?” I suggest.
Schmulek shakes his head, he turns to Walter.
“Er will nix verstayen,” he doesn’t want to understand.
• • •
But destiny ordained that I was soon to understand, and at the expense of Schmulek himself. That evening the door of the barrack opened, a voice shouted “Achtung!” and every sound died out, giving way to a leaden silence.
Two SS men entered (one of them has many chevrons, perhaps he is an officer?). Their steps echoed in the barrack as if it were empty; they spoke to the chief doctor, and he showed them a register, pointing here and there. The officer took notes on a pad. Schmulek touches my knee: “Pass auf, pass auf,” pay attention.
> The officer, followed by the doctor, walks around in silence, nonchalantly, between the bunks. He has a switch in his hand, and flicks at the edge of a blanket hanging down from a top bunk—the patient hurries to adjust it. The officer moves on.
Another has a yellow face; the officer pulls off his blanket, he trembles, the officer touches his belly, says, “Gut, gut,” and moves on.
Now he is looking at Schmulek; he brings out his pad, checks the number of the bed and the number of the tattoo. I see it all clearly from above: he has made a cross beside Schmulek’s number. Then he moves on.
I now look at Schmulek and behind him I see Walter’s eyes, and so I ask no questions.
The next day, in place of the usual group of patients who had recovered, two distinct groups were sent out. Those in the first were shaved and shorn and had a shower. Those in the second went out as they were, beards unshaved, bandages unchanged, without a shower. Nobody said goodbye to the latter, nobody gave them messages for healthy comrades.
Schmulek was part of this group.
In this discreet and sedate manner, without display or anger, massacre moves through the wards of Ka-Be every day, touching one man or another. When Schmulek left, he gave me his spoon and knife; Walter and I avoided looking at each other and were silent for a long time. Then Walter asked me how I manage to keep my ration of bread so long, and explained to me that he usually cuts his bread lengthwise so that he has wider slices, on which the margarine spreads more easily.
Walter explains many things to me: Schonungsblock means rest barrack; here are only the patients who are less seriously ill or convalescent, or who do not require treatment. Among them, at least fifty have dysentery, in a more or less serious form.
These last are checked every third day. They line up along the corridor. At the far end are two tin basins and the nurse, with a register, a watch, and a pencil. Two at a time, the patients present themselves and have to show, on the spot and at once, that they still have diarrhea; to prove it, they are given exactly one minute. After which, they show the result to the nurse, who looks at it and judges. They wash the basins quickly in a washtub provided for the purpose and the next two take their place.
Of those waiting, some are contorted with the pain of holding in their precious evidence another twenty, another ten minutes; others, without resources at the moment, strain veins and muscles in the contrary effort. The nurse observes, impassive, chewing his pencil, one eye on the watch, one eye on the specimens successively presented. In doubtful cases, he leaves with the basin and goes to show it to the doctor.
. . . And I receive a visit: it is Piero Sonnino, from Rome. “Did you see how I tricked him?” Piero has mild enteritis, has been here for twenty days, and is quite content, resting and growing fatter; he couldn’t care less about the selections and has decided to stay in Ka-Be until the end of winter, at all costs. His method consists of getting in line behind some authentic dysentery patient, who offers a guarantee of success; when it’s his turn he asks for his collaboration (to be rewarded with soup or bread), and if the latter agrees, and the nurse has a moment of inattention, he switches the basins in the middle of the crowd, and the deed is done. Piero knows what he’s risking, but it has gone well so far.
Yet life in Ka-Be is not this. It is not the crucial moments of the selections, it is not the grotesque episodes of checking for diarrhea and lice, it is not even the illnesses.
Ka-Be is the Lager without its physical discomforts. Therefore, anyone who still has any seeds of conscience feels his conscience reawaken; and so, in the long empty days, he speaks of other things than hunger and work, and begins to consider what they have made us become, how much they have taken away from us, what this life is. In this Ka-Be, an enclosure of relative peace, we have learned that our personality is fragile, that it is much more endangered than our life; and the wise men of ancient times, instead of warning us “Remember that you must die,” would have done better to remind us of this greater danger that threatens us. If, from inside the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men, it would have been this: Be sure not to tolerate in your own homes what is inflicted on us here.
When one works, one suffers and there is no time to think: home is less than a memory. But here the time is ours; despite the prohibition, we exchange visits from bunk to bunk, and we talk and talk. The wooden barrack, crammed with suffering humanity, is full of words, of memories, and of another pain. Heimweh, the Germans call this pain; it’s a beautiful word that means “longing for home.”
We know where we come from; memories of the world outside crowd our sleeping and our waking hours, we become aware, with amazement, that we have forgotten nothing, every memory evoked rises before us with painful clarity.
But where we are going we do not know. Perhaps we will be able to survive the illnesses and escape the selections, perhaps even endure the work and hunger that wear us down—and then? Here, momentarily far away from the curses and the beatings, we can reenter into ourselves and meditate, and then it becomes clear that we will not return. We traveled here in sealed freight cars; we saw our women and our children depart toward nothingness; we, made slaves, have marched countless times to and from our silent labor, dead in spirit long before our anonymous death. No one must leave here who might carry to the world, together with the mark stamped in his flesh, the evil tidings of what man’s audacity made of man in Auschwitz.
3. Horses 8, Men 40, Tare, Capacity.
Our Nights
After twenty days of Ka-Be, when my wound was practically healed, I was discharged, to my great disappointment.
The ceremony is simple, but entails a painful and dangerous period of readjustment. On leaving Ka-Be, those who have no special contacts are not returned to their former Block and Kommando but are enrolled, on the basis of criteria wholly unknown to me, in some other barrack and given some other kind of work. Moreover, they leave Ka-Be naked; they are given “new” clothes and shoes (I mean not those left behind at their entry), which need to be adapted to their own persons with speed and diligence, and this involves effort and expense. They have once more to acquire a spoon and knife. And finally—and this is the gravest aspect—they find themselves inserted into an unknown environment, among hostile companions never seen before, with leaders whose character they do not know and against whom consequently it is difficult to protect themselves.
Man’s capacity to dig a niche for himself, to secrete a shell, to build around himself a tenuous barrier of defense, even in apparently desperate circumstances, is astonishing and deserves serious study. It is an invaluable exercise of adaptation, partly passive and unconscious, partly active: hammering in a nail above his bunk on which to hang his shoes at night; concluding tacit pacts of nonaggression with neighbors; understanding and accepting the habits and laws of the individual Kommando, the individual Block. By virtue of this work, one manages after a few weeks to arrive at a certain equilibrium, a certain degree of security in the face of the unforeseen. One has made oneself a nest: the trauma of the transplantation is over.
But the man who leaves Ka-Be, naked and almost always insufficiently recovered, feels himself ejected into the dark and cold of sidereal space. His trousers are falling down, his shoes hurt, his shirt has no buttons. He searches for a human contact and finds only backs turned. He is as helpless and vulnerable as a newborn babe, but in the morning he will have to march to work.
It is in these conditions that I find myself when the nurse entrusts me, after various obligatory administrative rites, to the care of the Blockältester of Block 45. But at once a thought fills me with joy: I’m in luck, this is Alberto’s Block!
Alberto is my best friend. He is only twenty-two, two years younger than me, but none of us Italians have shown a capacity for adaptation like his. Alberto entered the Lager head high, and lives in the Lager unscathed and uncorrupted. He understood, before any of us, that this life is war; he allowed himself no indulgences, he wasted no time complaining or fee
ling sorry for himself and others, but entered the battle from the outset. He is sustained by intelligence and intuition. He reasons correctly; often he does not even reason but is right just the same. He grasps everything immediately; he knows only a little French but understands whatever the Germans and Poles tell him. He responds in Italian and with gestures, he makes himself understood and at once wins sympathy. He fights for his life but remains everybody’s friend. He “knows” whom to corrupt, whom to avoid, whose compassion to arouse, whom to resist.
Yet (and it is for this virtue of his that his memory is still dear and close to me) he did not become corrupt himself. I always saw, and still see in him, the rare figure of the strong yet gentle man against whom the weapons of the night are blunted.
But I was unable to get permission to sleep in a bunk with him—not even Alberto could manage that, although by now he enjoyed a certain popularity in Block 45. It was a pity, because to have a bed companion whom one can trust, or at least with whom one can reach an understanding, is an inestimable advantage; and, besides, it is winter now and the nights are long, and since we are forced to exchange sweat, smell, and warmth with someone, under the same blanket, and in a width of seventy centimeters, it is clearly desirable that he be a friend.
In the winter the nights are long and we are allowed a considerable period of time to sleep.
Little by little, the noise in the Block dies down; the distribution of the evening ration ended more than an hour ago, and only a few stubborn men continue to scrape the by now shiny bottom of the bowl, turning it meticulously under the lamp, frowning with concentration. Engineer Kardos moves around the bunks, tending wounded feet and suppurating corns. This is his trade: there is no one who will not willingly give up a slice of bread to soothe the torment of those numb sores, which bleed all day, at every step. And so, in this manner, honestly, Engineer Kardos has solved the problem of living.
