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Chapter 16, The Last One
Summary
On a snowy night just before Christmas, Levi and Alberto march back to the Lager from their work sites. They have been busy inventing new ways of earning bread rations and excitedly share their news. Levi and Alberto’s three new enterprises stand to supplement their bread rations nicely. Levi develops a way to smuggle a broom from his work site. Alberto tests a scheme for trading a large stolen file for two small files in the civilian marketplace. He returns one smaller file and keeps the other for trade. Alberto repurposes celluloid labels from his worksite for a clever tracking system for the shower monitors. The shower supervisors are delighted to pay for them.
The men check in with the roll call in the square and then see the searchlight trained on the gallows. The condemned man is brought out into the searchlight. In October, the Special Kommando attached to the gas chambers and ovens had blown up a crematorium. A few hundred prisoners had found the strength to sabotage the killing machine. They were all executed save one, this man standing in the searchlight. The condemned man is to now serve as an example. The doomed man cries out to the throng, “Comrades, I am the last one!” The inmates file submissively past his hanging body. Alberto and Levi feel put to shame by the heroic man’s death.
Analysis
Alberto and Levi take pride in their ingenuity. They are not just surviving anymore, they are thriving, working the system with intelligence. Henri, Alfred L., and Elias confer their approval, and Alberto and Levi enjoy newfound status. Their success exhilarates them and they excitedly plan more exploits.
They see their behavior in a whole new light at the hanging of the subversive inmate, however. The condemned man helped plan and carry out the destruction of a Birkenau crematorium. As a member of the Sonderkommando, the man was part of the squad that removed bodies from the gas chambers and transported them to graves or cremations. The man’s heroic act challenged their own acceptance of the status quo. Their docile behavior at the hanging reinforced this realization. As he went to the gallows, the condemned man cried out his defiant message, “Comrades, I am the last one!” Not one had the initiative to take off their hat in reverence for the man’s sacrifice, not until they were told to do so by the German commander.
Levi reflects that the Germans have destroyed all of them, just as much as they killed this man, by completely subjugating them. Although he and Alberto have finally made a breakthrough to keep themselves fed and healthy, and even if they were to survive their ordeal and return home, they will never be whole.
