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Chapter 1, The Journey
Summary
The narrator Primo Levi begins the story of his imprisonment in a Nazi labor camp by relaying the circumstances that led to his capture in the Alps of Italy and transport to Auschwitz, Germany. As an Italian Jew and recent college graduate ostracized under repressive antisemitic laws, he had joined an anti-Fascist dissident group. On December 13, 1943, the group was betrayed to the Fascist Militia, paramilitary bands of thugs used by Benito Mussolini to control power. Rather than confess to agitating against the government, which Levi assumed meant certain death, he admitted to being a Jew and was sent to an internment camp near Modena, Italy. Inmates included Jewish individuals and families who had been discovered, reported, or had given themselves up, as well as the Fascist Republic’s political undesirables, both foreign and domestic. Mussolini had allied with Hitler in 1940, and SS officers arrived in February of 1944 to deport the Jewish contingent of the camp. The SS is an abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, the self-proclaimed political soldiers of the Nazi Party. Levi refers to the “Lager” as shorthand for “arbeitslager,” German for “forced labor camp.”
When the Jews are told they had one night to prepare for a two-week journey, even without knowing the destination, they understand their fate. Husbands and fathers pray or drink themselves insensible, while wives and mothers wash clothing and make food for the trip. The women of one extended family, the Gattegnos, rapidly finish the trip preparations to have time for mourning rites. Their all-night candlelit vigil of mourning draws the camp Jews, some of whom experience the legacy of grief from centuries past. The next morning, exhibiting military efficiency, the Germans hold roll-call to account for 650 persons, who were then bused to the train station. Levi describes recognizing the dreaded transport trains, which were boxcars used for goods and merchandise into which they were crammed. The trip wound through northern Italy into Germany, the prisoners’ homeland’s cities falling behind them until they reached the Austrian border at Brenner Pass. There, Levi imagines the joy he will experience on his return home. The passengers continue to mark their progress northward across Europe in the changing languages of the city names, from Austrian to Czech to Polish.
Ominously, the train halts in a cold, deserted plain. The 650 people are quietly, efficiently culled to 125 men and women fittest to work, who are loaded on trucks. The others, including children, are left behind to an unknown death. The luggage is picked up by labor camp prisoners, recognizable by their subservient demeanor and ragged striped uniforms. Levi thinks of escape fleetingly, abandoning the thought upon noticing the guard who politely requests their valuables, which will not be useful to them anymore.
Analysis
Primo Levi sets the tone for his narrative by introducing himself with ironic detachment. When he looks at himself, he sees a twenty-four-year-old recluse living in a world of ideas, marginalized by nationalistic racial policies. He characterizes his resistance to the repressive political regime as abstract. He and his friends lacked the financial means, the network of contacts, and the arms for aggressively confronting the fascist enforcers. When arrested, Levi pragmatically chooses to confess to being a Jew to escape death, as he knows it would be more dangerous to out himself as a political dissident. Levi gives each of his fellow detainees at the Modena internment camp the same thoughtful analysis, seeing all the different life circumstances that brought them to this juncture. When the Jews’ fate of deportation becomes clear, each prepares to die in their own way. The pious Gattegno women know the Jewish customs of mourning codified by the Jews’ long history of persecution and divine intervention, and Levi notes their night-long lamentations bring the other Jews together to experience the legacy of grief, this time without the hope of an Exodus-like rescue.
When the German SS take command of the camp, Levi brings his astute scrutiny to the German officers. “SS” stands for Schutzstaffel (German for “protective echelon”), the elite corps of soldiers. With this first encounter, the German military persona begins to emerge. The absurdity of the officers’ bureaucratic roll-call functions as a dehumanizing tactic, allowing the officers to refer to the people as “pieces.” When they are bused to the train station and behold one of the infamous transport trains, Levi describes it as a nightmare realization of doom. Riding crammed in the boxcars, Levi analyzes the defenses the human mind deploys against unhappiness and concludes that the sleeplessness, cold, thirst, and hunger distract them from despair. As they travel through Italy, peering out through the boxcar slats, Levi allows himself to dream of his return home. But with the precision of hindsight, he tells the reader that of the forty-five people in his boxcar, only four would end up returning. Levi’s counting of the people at every juncture shows a dedication to remembering each person: 650 when they board the train, 125 when they get into the trucks, and four out of 45 survivors returning home.
Levi portrays the further shifts in his reality as the train stops on a deserted plain. Germans dispassionately cull the group, loading the healthy adults onto trucks, the rest left behind to certain death. Levi assesses the cruelty of killing the children as the logical consequence of Germans’ intentions to eradicate Jews. The prisoners who appear to collect the luggage seem like wraiths, and Levi comments he will soon be one of them.
As the truck speeds toward their destination along the curving and bumpy road, Levi wonders about the possibility of escape, but he thinks better of it when he realizes they are under armed guard in the truck. When their guard politely asks if they would like to give up their valuables, Levi and his fellow prisoners recognize a sideline scheme to profit from their predicament. Again, the scene initiates Levi into a new moral order. Reacting in indignation, Levi registers the welcome distraction of anger and amusement, as if to revel in a world of normalcy far from this new one.
