Journal Entry #15

Journal Entry #15
Chapter 15 : Die drei Leute vom Labor

Chapter 15 seems to describe the anxiousness and anticipation of what is going to happen next to them. Fear would be a better word than anxiousness because they fear what their fate would be. No one knows what will happen to them, and if they will actually survive the camp. It is amazing how the Italians started out as a number of 174,000 and now, there are only 21 that is still breathing. It would be so frightening to see so much people die from the same race, and I would never be able to comfort myself and assure myself that I would survive the camp. Unexpected events always seem to happen in Auschwitz. For example, when Primo thought he would be able to get better treatment since he was the specialized Kommando, that meant that they would work in shelter which left them in their summer outfits. They were treated rather worse than better since they were the "chemists." This was totally unexpected for Primo, but this was how Auschwitz was like, full of surprises.
However, everything changes when Primo is one of the chosen three to go to the laboratory. It is ironic how a lot of comrades congradulated him, but with envy. Working conditions seemed better, but there was one torment that Primo had to stand. The girls in the laboratory kept on singing and talking about their ordinary life, which made Primo wonder why he was captured, and how he was a free man just one year ago. "I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself." This quote seems to express all of Primo's feeling of desperation and his longing to go back to his normal life. The camp took everything away, even his memories and his identity, which left him there stripped of humanity and making him a weak beast.
These girls talking and his memories are psychologically disturbing, but Primo will now have hope for survival since physical conditions are much more better than before. This foreshadows a great change in Primo's tone of talking, maybe to a bright and hopeful tone.