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       Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
       
       History book review written on September 1st, 2009, followed by not
       written today.
       
       The author writes in a detached, dispassionate style that is
       comparatively easy to read.  Yet the numbers alone tell a harsh tal
       The author was one in a convoy of 650 Jews from Italy, loaded onto 
       freight cars.  Of those 650, 96 men and 29 women entered the camps.
       By October 1944, 21 men remained.  Out of the author's freight car,
       eventually saw their homes again.  The night of January 18th 1945 t
       outside temperature was -50F.  The author was in a hospital and the
       camp had no power or heat.  Explosions broke the windows during an
       air raid.  It was a mixed curse because the cold temperature helped
       to control the spread of disease.  I found it an interesting idea
       that the destruction of one's personality would be more frightening
       than death.
       
       One did not survive by being good.
       
       "To sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all
       orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the
       discipline of the work and the camp.  Experience showed that only
       exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way.
       
       Companionship and hope made all the difference.
       
       "However little sense there may be in trying to specify why I, rath
       than thousands of others, managed to survive the test, I believe th
       it is really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much
       for his material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by h
       presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there
       still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone
       still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred
       and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of
       good, but for which it was worth surviving."
       
        title: Survival in Auschwitz
        author: Levi, Primo
        isbn: 0684826801
        rating: 4
 (HTM)  source: Archive.org
       
       Follow-up thoughts on November 16, 2016:
       
       Below is a relevant story about a former manager's father:
       
       "Bob" was a pilot during the last world war.  Nazis shot Bob's plan
       down and captured him in Italy.  The captured pilots were put on a
       death march through the alps in the winter, with no shoes, no food,
       and inadequate clothing.  When the pilots collapsed from exhaustion
       and illness, they would be beaten.  If they still wouldn't move, th
       they were shot and their body was left behind.  Bob was ill and was
       not rising from his last collapse.  He would have been executed,
       except another pilot picked him up and carried him the rest of the
       way through the harsh conditions.  Most of the pilots died during
       that march.
       
       Bob and his savior remained friends for life.  One day Bob asked wh
       he was the one who was saved, out of all of the other pilots.  The
       friend's response was interesting.  Just before the flight, Bob
       received a telegram that his first child was born.  Bob's friend
       wanted him to be able to see his son.  In a sense, the mere existen
       of his newborn son is what set Bob apart and saved his life.
       
 (DIR) BenCollver - Phlog
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