of theLager, the concentration camp. The tendency in people to do this, his says, is like an infection.

The SS refer to their prisoners as "pieces" when they do their roll call for the transport train. Once arrived in Auschwitz, the behavior of the guards, and the instructions given to the inmates, are surreal. The prisoners are told to strip, to place their clothes on the ground, and to guard their shoes so that the shoes "will not be stolen," as if there were any reason somebody would steal shoes in this setting. The prisoners are dying of thirst, but there is a faucet in front of them which is dripping water but has a sign over it saying "Drinking forbidden." They are shaved and then herded into a shower room but just left to stand there, while the officer has the interpreter tell them to be quiet because "this is not a rabbinical school." It is not simply that the prisoners are treated as not human, as objects, but that a gratuitous sadism marks the actions of their captors. The "selection," when it occurs (choosing who will be sent to the gas chamber and who will be kept alive), is a randomized thing, an indifferent process. Though if it had any logic about it, it would of course be just as barbarous. Levi nevertheless remained alive and was liberated in January of 1945, having been left at Auschwitz instead of evacuated as most of the prisoners were, before the approach of the Russian army.

Levi states that human beings are resistant to the concept of "the infinite," and therefore neither complete happiness nor complete unhappiness are possible in the human mind. To me it's not entirely clear how this concept is connected to his larger theme of inhuman cruelty, which, under the Nazis, seems actually to have the infinite scope one could not believe possible. At one point he states that he and the others, when all were without hope, were kept alive by the violence of the SS men towards them. It would have been easier to die, he implies, if their cruelty and sadism had been less severe. The reaction by the prisoners is the essence of what it means to be human. I would judge this point as one that both amplifies and paradoxically contradicts the theme at the center of his memoir. He asks "if this is a man?" as if the question of how the events he describes are possible in human life is unanswerable. Yet by staying alive, the prisoners have obviously proven their humanity, which should not have needed proof.

I think that Levi invites the reader to explore the meaning of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, in general. Levi's work is detached enough so that the meaning of the place and the experiences can speak for themselves. Levi does not clutter the narrative with so much of his own emotional expression. Rather, he "lets it breathe," inviting the reader to consider the true meaning of the experience in their own mind. When Levi retells the narrative of what happened, he constructs it in a manner so that the reader is able to begin the process of exploring the Holocaust and its meaning for themselves. I think that it takes a great deal of internal courage and sacrifice to attempt to detach oneself from their own memoirs of the Holocaust for the sake of others' recollection and understanding. At the same time, I feel that Levi's account compels the reader to continue the course of study on the Holocaust to try to understand more about it. Levi's account is so meaningful on this level in that he is willing to refrain from offering his own personalized notion of what Auschwitz means in order for the reader to develop their own understanding of it, something that Steinlauf conveys to Levi as the entire purpose behind why they endure what they endure. In this, the reader is left to explore more elements of Auschwitz, greater analysis of what Steiner would call "the silence" evoked by the Holocaust and the understanding of it.