According to Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. How did Auschwitz systematically dehumanize the prisoners - Essay Example

Firstly, in order to understand the scope of such a question, it is necessary to consider the very nature of humanity as the prisoners grasped the concept from the outset of their internment. With respect to the way that the prisoners were transported to the sites, one can clearly see a very obvious overtone of bestial contempt. Firstly, the prisoners were separated from their belongings as they were organized and herded just like animals into train cars that were oftentimes originally purposed for meat transportation.

Once the individuals had arrived at the concentration camp however, the horro of their experience had unfortunately just begun. A further way that humanity was taken, specifically discussed by Primo Levi, was the manner in which the prisoners were immediately faced with the fact that in order to survive, key elements of their own interpretations of morality, justice, and “good” and “evil” must be adjusted. Although this seems like a small thing, this shift of the understanding of humanity and how prisoners were forced to relate with one another as a function of their captivity worked to redefine the way that these prisoners viewed their own humanity as a function of the peculiar type of life that the inhabitants of these horrible camps had to endure.

In other words, mere survival required that the prisoner purge all manifestations of justice, purity, selflessness, and kindness that may have typified that approach that they took to life prior to being acquainted with the horrors of Auschwitz (Levi 86). To build upon this theme of lost humanity, Levi discusses the way in which the harsh conditions of concentration camp life demanded that the individual prisoner focus almost solely on their own survival as an all-encompassing world view and defense mechanism.

As discussed previously in this essay, this type