Primo Levi's 'Grey Zone'

Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, wrote of the ‘grey zone’ as the moral space between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. His main point is that this space recognises the multiplicity of experiences and people who struggled within Nazi policy aiming to create division and strip humanity from those it touched. Thus, prisoners who gained privileges through their contributions to the Final Solution, such as the Sonderkommandos cannot be categorised as totally innocent, yet neither should they be morally damned for doing what they had to in order to survive.

Inga Clendinnen seeks to use the ‘grey zone’ to complicate the traditional distinctions between perpetrators, bystanders and victims. She uses Levi’s memoir as part of her discussion but to some extent