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The unnamed prisoner who is sentenced to be hanged at Christmastime represents the unbroken human spirit. He is the last surviving member of a group of saboteurs intent on derailing the Auschwitz death machine, the others having been executed by the SS. He refuses to accept the atrocities he's forced to perpetrate on his fellow prisoners and has chosen to die for a principle. His dying declaration—"I am the last one!"—was meant to wake up the survivors who are content to go along with the status quo. The Nazis chose to make this man a public example because he remained unrepentant. However, his defiance even to the end had the opposite of the Nazis' intended effect of instilling fear. Instead, his heroic act reminds the prisoners of the integrity they have lost, as seen in the shame Levi and Alberto feel at his hanging.
