Journal Entry #6

Journal Entry #6
Chapter 6 : The Work

Chapter 6 is full of ironic yet humorous explanations of what "work" is in the camp. Carrying heavly loads, receiving blows, and dragging their feet back and forth is probably what people think of as hard "work" in the concentration camps. Ironically, hard "work" in the camp is avoiding such work. For example, going to the latrine, finding a physically fit partner, and staying around pairs are all types of "work" that people do in order to save energy.
"The latrine is an oasis of peace" (68) is how Primo describes the bathroom to be. It is funny how a bathroom can be an oasis of peace, but in the camps, the bathroom may have been the place of peace since no one was there to give him blows or orders to work. Forcing people to work, however, didn't work out so well. This is same for some communist countries in the past. For instance, Stalin established a totalitarian government ordering people to work, while their profit was taken away. When people are forced to do something against their will, it seems like people have a nature to rebel. Same for the prisoners, they didn't work hard as they could, and tried to kill time by going to the latrine, hanging around the pairs, and any sort of activity that was able to exempt them from working.
Even though the Kapo's new what was going on, they didn't do much about it since beating or scolding the prisoners to work hard wouldn't make any difference. Since the prisoners had nothing much to lose, and they knew in their hearts that they were eventually going to die, beating them was probably not an answer to such revolt. In fact, some Kapo's were kind, and they still had humanity in them since they were not stripped away from them. The Kapo's didn't experience the pain that the Jews went through, but I think that they were going through some pain just by watching, and they probably didn't want to do anything more to make the life of the Jew's more miserable.