“But thousands of feet above us, in the gaps in the grey clouds, the complicated miracles of aerial duels began. Above us, bare, helpless and unarmed, men of our time sought reciprocal death with the most refined of instruments. A movement of a finger could cause the destruction of the entire camp, could annihilate thousands of men; while the sum total of all our efforts and exertions would not be sufficient to prolong by one minute the life of even one of us” (Pg 172).
Primo Levi was one of the few people who actually have survived through the selection, brutal treatment from SS officer, the bleak and freezing winter, deceptions among the prisoners, and much more. It seemed like he wasn’t proud of himself at all. He was into glorifying the people that have passed away from this experience because he truly believed that the people that have actually died in the camp are the true eye-witnesses to this horrible disaster. As I thought about it for moment, if I were in that situation, I would have wanted to die than to survive Auschwitz. Maybe because I have such a weak mentality and small-minded, I wouldn’t have managed to live even after I was free from the concentration camp. The memory of the all the small events that occurred during the lives in Auschwitz will come back alive and dance as if it was a painful endless waltz. Perhaps, after all the harsh training in the camp, my mind would have become strong and resilient in any society and in any situation, since there is nothing that is worse than what had happened in Auschwitz. But maybe it doesn’t make a person stronger but weaker, and we can see that through the suicide of Primo Levi. At the end, Primo maybe couldn’t resist the awful memory and accustomed to the aftermath of the whole Holocaust.
2007년 3월 11일 일요일
Journal #16
“To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgement” (pg 150).
I cannot even imagine how much the Jews at that time would hate the Germans. Even I, who am completely unrelated to any of the Jews in the concentration camp at that time, was outraged and emotionally moved by their indescribable experience in Auschwitz. I wonder why God would let this unjust destruction to happen to the innocent Jews. The holocaust definitely destroyed the people’s bodies and also their mentalities. But then if we think logically, God cannot always stop the evils and sinful acts in the world. When God created us, He created us with His own image. Thus we were to have a mind, will, and spirit. He created us to have a free-will. If God would want to stop all the evils, He would have to limit our minds and wills so we could only do and think of right things. Then we wouldn’t be created with God’s own image. Recently, in the Bible class, I learned that sin exists because God sometimes uses sin for justice and good deeds. For example, in the Bible, God used the sinful act of Joseph’s brothers to prosper Joseph in the future. Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers and was sold as a slave to Egypt, but later he became second highest officer of Egypt and saved the whole generation of Israelites at that time. Based on this, I assume that God will use this terrible event, Holocaust, for good purposes. We’ll never know His purposes because He is God and we are not.
I cannot even imagine how much the Jews at that time would hate the Germans. Even I, who am completely unrelated to any of the Jews in the concentration camp at that time, was outraged and emotionally moved by their indescribable experience in Auschwitz. I wonder why God would let this unjust destruction to happen to the innocent Jews. The holocaust definitely destroyed the people’s bodies and also their mentalities. But then if we think logically, God cannot always stop the evils and sinful acts in the world. When God created us, He created us with His own image. Thus we were to have a mind, will, and spirit. He created us to have a free-will. If God would want to stop all the evils, He would have to limit our minds and wills so we could only do and think of right things. Then we wouldn’t be created with God’s own image. Recently, in the Bible class, I learned that sin exists because God sometimes uses sin for justice and good deeds. For example, in the Bible, God used the sinful act of Joseph’s brothers to prosper Joseph in the future. Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers and was sold as a slave to Egypt, but later he became second highest officer of Egypt and saved the whole generation of Israelites at that time. Based on this, I assume that God will use this terrible event, Holocaust, for good purposes. We’ll never know His purposes because He is God and we are not.
Journal #15
“This year has gone by so quickly. This time last year I was a free man: an outlaw but free, I had a name and a family, I had an eager and restless mind, an agile and healthy body. I used to think of many, far-away things: of my work, of the end of the war, of good and evil, of the nature of things and of the laws which govern human actions; and also of the mountains, of singing and loving, of music, of poetry. I had an enormous, deep-rooted, foolish faith in the benevolence of fate; to kill and to die seemed extraneous literary things to me. My days were both cheerful and sad, but I regretted them equally, they were all full and positive; the future stood before me as a great treasure. Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold; I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself” (Pg 143).
Our future is unpredictable. If we can predict our future, it might be an excellent idea to be God. It is hard to imagine Primo Levi being a man that was loving and loved music, singing, and poetry because in the whole entire book, Primo Levi basically had apathy of everything surrounded him and wasn’t a cheerful man as he used to be. The camp itself has totally changed Primo Levi. German totally destroyed all the passions and joys of Primo Levi. I can’t even imagine that someone or something will avoid me from my passions and joy of my life. Germans even took away the precious time of the people. Time is one of the most valuable things in life because once the time flies by, there is no going back. It is horrible to think about how German has done to the Jews.
Our future is unpredictable. If we can predict our future, it might be an excellent idea to be God. It is hard to imagine Primo Levi being a man that was loving and loved music, singing, and poetry because in the whole entire book, Primo Levi basically had apathy of everything surrounded him and wasn’t a cheerful man as he used to be. The camp itself has totally changed Primo Levi. German totally destroyed all the passions and joys of Primo Levi. I can’t even imagine that someone or something will avoid me from my passions and joy of my life. Germans even took away the precious time of the people. Time is one of the most valuable things in life because once the time flies by, there is no going back. It is horrible to think about how German has done to the Jews.
Journal #14
“We know that tomorrow will be like today: perhaps it will rain a little more or a little less, or perhaps instead of digging soil we will go and unload bricks at the Carbide factory. Or the war might even finish tomorrow, or we might all be killed or transferred to another camp, or one of those great changes might take place which, ever since the Lager has been the Lager, have been infatigably foretold as imminent and certain. But who can seriously think about tomorrow?” (Pg 133)
It is terribly incredible how the camp changed the minds of the people. It not only mentally made the prisoners to be machine-like but also physically. They didn’t care about their lives for tomorrow and they were so indifferent to their future. However I think it is false to say that they did not have any hope or the mentality to survive camp at all. Without that little hope, there wouldn’t have been any survivors in Auschwitz. Although Primo Levi have stated that he didn’t care and didn’t fear the death, and didn’t care if he were to die tomorrow, Primo was being sly and clever to not to waste any unnecessary energy and to strictly go by the survival rule that existed in the Lager. If he really didn’t care for his life, wouldn’t he have just thrown himself to the electric barb wire and die there than to die in the crematorium? I think people have that kind of mentality, but they just don’t realize it.
It is terribly incredible how the camp changed the minds of the people. It not only mentally made the prisoners to be machine-like but also physically. They didn’t care about their lives for tomorrow and they were so indifferent to their future. However I think it is false to say that they did not have any hope or the mentality to survive camp at all. Without that little hope, there wouldn’t have been any survivors in Auschwitz. Although Primo Levi have stated that he didn’t care and didn’t fear the death, and didn’t care if he were to die tomorrow, Primo was being sly and clever to not to waste any unnecessary energy and to strictly go by the survival rule that existed in the Lager. If he really didn’t care for his life, wouldn’t he have just thrown himself to the electric barb wire and die there than to die in the crematorium? I think people have that kind of mentality, but they just don’t realize it.
Journal #13
“Even before the selection is over, everybody knows that the left was effectively the ‘schlechte Seite’, the bad side. There have naturally been some irregularities: Rene, for example, so young and robust, ended on the left; perhaps it was because he has glasses, perhaps because he walks a little stooped like a myope, but more probably because of a simple mistake: Rene passed the commission immediately in front of me and there could have been a mistake with our cards. I think about it, discuss it with Alberto, and we agree that the hypothesis is probable; I do not know what I will think tomorrow and later; today I feel no distinct emotion” (Pg 128).
This unfortunate death of Rene made me to realize how little we are. We, humans, are such a fragile and have no power at all. That simple mistake with the cards has made a man to die in the gas chamber, probably more than just one man. It is funny to see how some of us try so hard to be like god. We cannot even choose our destination and everything about us, including birth and death, are purely based on fate, more accurately on God. For instance Hitler and other dictators, weren’t they trying to be god-like? They desired to have controls over all the people and all the nations, and everything had to follow on their own rules and laws. But as we think about it, we are just little puppets compare to the all might God. I think that is the human nature. I believe that there are three essential human desires which are money, fame, and power. Once, my youth pastor told me that having a power over others is like brandishing a sword and killing others in order to gain benefits. Isn’t that what people do when they want to act like god? Some foolish humans desire to be like god so they could be omnipotent and rule the world in a way that pleases them. That is what had happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and this issue will arise continuously since it’s a human nature.
This unfortunate death of Rene made me to realize how little we are. We, humans, are such a fragile and have no power at all. That simple mistake with the cards has made a man to die in the gas chamber, probably more than just one man. It is funny to see how some of us try so hard to be like god. We cannot even choose our destination and everything about us, including birth and death, are purely based on fate, more accurately on God. For instance Hitler and other dictators, weren’t they trying to be god-like? They desired to have controls over all the people and all the nations, and everything had to follow on their own rules and laws. But as we think about it, we are just little puppets compare to the all might God. I think that is the human nature. I believe that there are three essential human desires which are money, fame, and power. Once, my youth pastor told me that having a power over others is like brandishing a sword and killing others in order to gain benefits. Isn’t that what people do when they want to act like god? Some foolish humans desire to be like god so they could be omnipotent and rule the world in a way that pleases them. That is what had happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and this issue will arise continuously since it’s a human nature.
Journal #12
“In fact, we are the untouchables to the civilians. They think, more or less explicitly – with all the nuances lying between contempt and commiseration – that as we have been condemned to this life of ours, reduced to our condition, we must be tainted by some mysterious, grave sin. They hear us speak in many different languages, which they do not understand and which sound to them as grotesque as animal noises; they see us reduced to ignoble slavery, without hair, without honour and without names, beaten every day, more abject every day, and they never see in our eyes a light of rebellion, or of peace, or of faith. They know us as thieves and untrustworthy, muddy, ragged and starving, and mistaking the effect for the cause, they judge us worthy of our abasement. Who could tell one of our faces from the other? For them we are ‘Kazett’, a singular neuter word” (Pg 121).
I wonder if all the civilians thought of the Jews as how Primo Levi describes here. I wonder what the thought of German Christians was at that time, as they saw the prisoners in the concentration camp. It is arguable to assume that Hitler used propaganda and other effective ways to literally brainwash the people of Germany, so most German civilians actually treated the Jews as animals and worthless beings. At one moment, I was outraged by the fact that German civilians didn’t try hard and put their effort to help the Jews and oppose to the concentration camps. But then I realized that if I were in that situation, I wouldn’t have courage to do so because I would not want to give up my life because of the Jews. I won’t deny that I’m a self-centered person and that I’m a coward. I wouldn’t have sacrificed my future and my life for what I believed to be true. Maybe the people in Germany also felt that way. I sincerely admire those who sacrifice their lives for others. It requires great courage, which I obviously don’t have.
I wonder if all the civilians thought of the Jews as how Primo Levi describes here. I wonder what the thought of German Christians was at that time, as they saw the prisoners in the concentration camp. It is arguable to assume that Hitler used propaganda and other effective ways to literally brainwash the people of Germany, so most German civilians actually treated the Jews as animals and worthless beings. At one moment, I was outraged by the fact that German civilians didn’t try hard and put their effort to help the Jews and oppose to the concentration camps. But then I realized that if I were in that situation, I wouldn’t have courage to do so because I would not want to give up my life because of the Jews. I won’t deny that I’m a self-centered person and that I’m a coward. I wouldn’t have sacrificed my future and my life for what I believed to be true. Maybe the people in Germany also felt that way. I sincerely admire those who sacrifice their lives for others. It requires great courage, which I obviously don’t have.
Journal #11
“We slowed down. Pikolo was expert. He had chosen the path cleverly so that we would have to make a long detour, walking at least for an hour, without arousing suspicion. We spoke of our houses, of Strasbourg and Turin, of the books we had read, of what we had studied, of our mothers: how all mothers resemble each other! His mother too had scolded him for never knowing how much money he had in his pocket; his mother too would have been amazed if she had known that he had found his feet, that day by day he was finding his feet” (Pg 111).
In this life, it is rare to find a person whom you feel comfortable just by standing next to that person. But Primo Levi found a valuable friend in the concentration camp whom he could rely on and shares his life story before coming to the concentration camp. I think to have a reliable friend is more valuable and precious than even surviving the camp because through that kind of friendship, your view of life can change forever. It is better to die with the experience of that kind of bond and friendship with a person than to live a life without that experience at all. Personally I found two friends whom I can trust do death, and I’m really thankful to have them as my friends.
In this life, it is rare to find a person whom you feel comfortable just by standing next to that person. But Primo Levi found a valuable friend in the concentration camp whom he could rely on and shares his life story before coming to the concentration camp. I think to have a reliable friend is more valuable and precious than even surviving the camp because through that kind of friendship, your view of life can change forever. It is better to die with the experience of that kind of bond and friendship with a person than to live a life without that experience at all. Personally I found two friends whom I can trust do death, and I’m really thankful to have them as my friends.
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