Nazi Concentration Camps Low Survivorship Levi

Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi. 1995

Death Camps Not Special: “Ordinary” Nazi German Concentration Camps Had 90%-98% Mortality. Animosities Between Western Jews and the OSTJUDEN.

Italian Jew and author Primo Levi wasn’t sent to or near the gas chambers and crematoria. Instead, he was diverted into forced labor in the sub-camp of Monowitz (p. 386), some 7 km east of Auschwitz proper. Poles had to wear a large “P”. German political prisoners got various privileges, such as food and clothes from home, and exemption from the dreaded “selections”. (p. 183) He saw the bombed-out ruins of the Buna synthetic rubber plant. (p. 137) He predicted that, in the winter of 1944-1945, 7/10ths of the prisoners like him will die. (p. 123)

ANIMOSITIES CAN EXIST BETWEEN JEWS AS WELL AS AGAINST JEWS

The reader may not realize that western European Jews commonly looked down upon eastern European Jews (the OSTJUDEN) as “backward”. These feelings were fully reciprocated. Levi comments: “The Germans call them [the Italian Jews] `zwei linke Hande’ (two left hands) and even the Polish Jews despise them as they do not speak Yiddish.” (p. 49) After his release from Auschwitz, Levi ran across Polish Jews who couldn’t believe that Levi was even possibly Jewish because he didn’t speak Yiddish. (p. 279)

Levi’s experiences have broader implications. Whenever there is a hint of anti-Semitism in Poland, we do not hear the end of it. But when there is hatred of Jews against other Jews, there is not a peep about it. Go figure.

NOT ONLY JEWS SUFFERED: POLES DID TOO

Unlike most Auschwitz survivors, who traveled west, he traveled east and then south (for map, see pages 178-179). He saw for himself the victimization of the Poles: “In Katowice, and in all Poland, there was a shortage of men; the male population of working age had disappeared, prisoners in Germany and Russia, dispersed among partisan bands, massacred in battle, in the bombardments, in the reprisals, in the Lagers, in the ghettos. Poland was a country in mourning, a country of old men and widows.” (p. 239)

VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION: HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM: AN OVERT ATTEMPT TO BELITLE THE SUFFERINGS OF OTHERS

Having candidly discussed aspects of the Polokaust, author Levi then does an about-face. In the AFTERWORD, he asserts that, whereas the Nazi concentration camps had 90%-98% mortality, the figure for Soviet concentration camps was 30% maximum (p. 389). This is incorrect. Slaves toiling in the gold mines in the Soviet Far East faced close to 100% mortality. And, of course, particular groups targeted for annihilation experienced 100% mortality, be they Jews sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis, or the Polish officers and intellectuals sent to the killing forests near Katyn by the Communists.

Like Stalin like Hitler.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE 90%-98% MORTALITY RATE IN GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Many Holocaust-related narratives remind us that, whereas Jews were commonly [but not universally] dispatched to the death camps, Poles were implicitly favored by “only” being sent to the concentration camps. Not quite. While 100% mortality (of death camps) is greater than 90%-98% mortality (of concentration camps), the difference is not great. In addition, the arriving Jews had the privilege of dying quickly upon arrival—from poison gas or bullets—while the arriving Poles had to die slowly in agony (from starvation, overwork, etc.) Then both were equally dead.

But nowadays, only the Jews are remembered.