Journal # 1

During the history of World War two, there had been many incidences of atrocities, but the first chapter of the Survival in the Auschwitz, the journey, introduces the severe treatment of the Jews by Nazi in Europe. The author of the book, Primo Levi was Italian citizen of Jewish race, in which, he was also captured and set into concentration camps. There, he saw how systematic the Nazis were in forcing the Jews as laborers and slaughtering them whenever they were of no use.
The chapter one of the book vividly described how strong the racist idea Nazi people had toward the Jews. To Nazi people’s eyes, Jews were inferior, in that they should be treated with the lowest treatment possible. Such attitude is portrayed through every aspect of how they treated Jews. For instance, the people who were captured were stripped of everything, from their dignity, respect, names, and even modest clothes. In the chapter, Primo Levi describes how they were being stripped naked and were forced to take a shower in a bunch of other Jewish people. With this act, even their slightest respect and dignity remained in their hearts had been vanished, and the captives had only two choices to make in the concentration camps. Either they had to die, or to live by working under Nazi people. However, they had constant fear of going through “Selections” which separated. The German SS solders would separate those who were capable of work from those who were incapable. Those who seemed incapable of working were to be sent to the gas chambers to breathe in harmful gas until they could no longer breathe.
The detailed illustration of Primo Levi made me frown as I read the book, because of the cruelty that Germans enacted toward the Jews. The severe cruelty raised questions whether the Germans soldiers were doing it out of joy or were doing it only to secure their own lives from the threat of high officials. Even if German SS soldiers were “forced” to kill those mass Jewish people in gas chamber due to the threat of the high officials, it seems to go against the moral and ethical codes. Thus, I believe that even the only “excuse” of the German SS soldiers that they were forced to do it under the pressure of high officials; nothing could justify the cruelty they demonstrated toward the Jews. In other words, I could accept no word that could justify their acts of massacring Jews.