survival in auschwizt

Primo Levi, the author and subject of the autobiography was arrested in December 1943. An anti-Fascist Italian Jew, he was sent to a prison camp in Italy and then deported to Auschwitz in February, 1944. He admitted his heritage of being both Italian and Jewish. During the forced evacuation, 650 Jewish men are packed into twelve goods wagons. The trip is slow and tortuous; no food or water is provided and the weather is freezing. Of the forty-five people in Levi’s car, only four survive the Holocaust. The German SS Men sentence well over half of the arrivals including nearly all the women, all the children, all the elderly, and all the infirm to immediate murder. Of the 650 people, ninety-six men and twenty-nine women are judged to be healthy and are assigned respectively to Monowitz-Buna and Birkenau forced labour camps. The remaining people are gassed and cremated within a few hours.

Levi and twenty-nine other men are loaded onto a truck and transported to the Monowitz-Buna forced labour camp of about 10,000 prisoners, near Auschwitz in Upper Silesia.
They enter the gates under the sign Arbeit Macht Frei. They are held for hours in a cold room, filled ankle deep with freezing water. They are ordered to completely undress and remain naked, without shoes, for many hours. Then barbers enter the room and shave their heads. They then remain for more hours, wondering what has happened to their mothers, sisters, daughters, and infants. Levi engages a young boy named Schlome in a brief discussion. Schlome, a veteran of the camps for several years, offers depressing news and astounding advice.
Life in the Lager consists of insufficient food, filthy surroundings, no comfort and daily work of a harsh and physical nature. Those who become sick or incapacitated due to injury, starvation or exhaustion are murdered. The chapter contains a fairly detailed list of many of the Lager's rules and practices and demonstrates how completely subjugated the inmates found