Journal Entry #3

Jounral Entry #3
Chatper 3 : Initiation

“So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.” (41)

Steinlauf states that prisoners should wash, walk erect, and act in a way as if they were proud, not losing their dignity. Being clean is essential to our life, and sanity also helps us keep healthy. In the concentration camps, however, sanity seemed pointless since nothing would actually keep the prisoners "clean." In other words, cleaning themselves in the camp didn't actually clean them, but it was like an act of rebellion trying to keep their dignity and propriety against the Germans. I think Steinlauf made some sense out of his words, but having hope seemed to be pointless also because there was no suck thing like hop in the camps. Having hopes, and holding on to human characteristics like dignity was probably a waste of time and probably made the prisoners weaker. Throwing away such human characteristics and pullnig out the inner beast inside would have helped the prisoners much more rather than hanging on to fragile human morals. Also, when the camp was a matter of life and death, would dignity and propriety matter? I thought that when death came, nothing mattered and no one would remember someone long enough that they had dignity in the camps. They were just to be remembered as "one" of the many pepole who died during the holocaust. So why not abandon the human characteristics for a while, become a beast, and survive?