13 & 14 "October 1944", "Kraus"

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

Goals for today 

Reminding us of our concepts 

Exploring the selection process 

Considering the character of "Klaus" 

Concepts Literature HL

Concepts to consider in the memoir:

Identity, control, humanity, language and morality 

 

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Literary concepts Literature HL

Concepts to consider in the memoir:

Structure, tone, stylistic choices, rhetorical devices

 

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Conceptual question

How does loss of humanity through control affect our identity and morality?

"October 1944" 

Levi's second winter in Monowitz/Auschwitz. He knows what winter feels like:

"It means that in the course of these months, from October to April, seven out of ten of us will die." 

" We will have to spend bread to acquire gloves, and lose hours of sleep to repair them when they become unstitched." 

"We will have to eat our meals in the hut, on our feet" 

"Wounds will open on everyone’s hands," 

Selection

A selection is coming: more insane cruelty. The prisoners are treated like numbers to be balanced, not as men.

Levi’s resignation to fate is useful and tragic: it allows him to live through the inhumanely cruel selection process with “inconceivable tranquillity”. But it is also tragic, as he no longer knows how to fear for his life; the will to live is breaking.

Chance seems to rule so much of what happens in the camps.

The apathy of a prisoner is starting to take hold. 

Selection

What are the steps of the selection procedure - before, during and after? Write them down. 

source: Wolheim memorial

Selection 

1.  Bell rings for 'Blocksperre'. The prisoners are held in their hut.
2. The doors are locked. Everyone got a card with their number, name, profession, age and nationality on it. Everyone undresses, but keeps their shoes on. 
3.  All inhabitants of the hut are moved to the 'Tagesraum'. The door to the outside and the entrance door to the dormitory are opened. 
4. The prisoner runs to the SS man, who is flanked by the quartermaster and the 'Blockältester', gives him his card and runs back to the dormitory entrance door. 
5. Whilst passing the SS Man twice, the front and back are shown and a decision is made - to keep alive or gas - the card is placed left of right.
6. The prisoners dress, but remain locked in until the last selection takes place. 
7. Those condemned to die get a double ration of soup until they are deported. 

How do these steps aid dehumanization when you consider what we learned from The Stanford Prison experiment? 

"Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory* prayer, no pardon, no expiation* by the guilty which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again? If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn's prayer." 

* abomination = something that you dislike and disapprove of

propitiatory = intended to please someone and make them feel calm

* expiation = the act of showing that you are sorry for bad behaviour by doing something or accepting punishment

Is Levi right to feel this? Is Kuhn’s prayer distasteful? Understandable?

Write your answer in your class notebook and support your opinion. 

"Kraus" 

Kraus is an energetic but clumsy Hungarian man who has recently entered the camp and who works too energetically for his comrades.

He has not understood that, in order to survive, “economizing on everything” is vital: survival has become an artform that not everyone understands

Kraus has “the stupid honesty of a small employee, he brought it along with him, and he seems to think that his present situation is like outside”

What do you think of Levi’s telling Kraus of a (false) wonderful dream?

Why did Levi do this?