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Chapter 4, Ka-Be
Summary
Levi describes a monotonous work assignment in which teams of two carry cast-iron support beams from railway cars to storage, a distance of 100 yards. His team partner is young Null Achtzehn, not a name but a number, German for “zero eighteen,” the last three digits of his tattoo. Camp consensus is that Null Achtzehn no longer merits a name as he has ceased to function as a human being, working to exhaustion, prone to sudden collapse. As they carry a beam, the load becomes unbalanced, Null Achtzehn trips, and the beam cuts Levi’s foot badly. He is admitted to the Krankenbau infirmary called Ka-Be for short, where prisoners receive treatment so they can later return to work. Those who worsen are sent to the gas chambers as no longer "economically useful Jews.” While being evaluated by Ka-Be staff for admittance, Levi endures a demeaning discussion of his infirmities by a nurse who declares him fit only for the crematorium.
Life in the Ka-Be removes Levi from the daily grind and in the long days of idleness he ruminates on the Lager existence. He hears strains of the music that drives the workers out of the camp and brings them back morning and night, the same dozen popular German tunes. Levi becomes friends with the Dutch Walter Bonn and the Polish Jew Schmulek. Walter explains how the infirmary system works. The talk turns to the existence of gas chambers and crematoriums, of which Levi is skeptical. Schmulek tries to convince him using the evidence of his own number, but Levi prefers to think of other reasons why of the 174,516 internees who have preceded him, only 40,000 remain. Schmulek recognizes that Levi simply doesn’t want to know the truth. When the doctor examines Schmulek, he is sent away not with those returning to work but with the unshaven, unshorn, unwashed group, and Levi sees how people disappear.
The reprieve from the harsh world of work and the comfort of warmth and rest have their cost. Levi feels a different kind of pain with the leisure for memories and he experiences homesickness. He wonders if he will ever be the same man if he were to return home.
Analysis
The Auschwitz Jewish internees represent the camp’s work horses. Their forced labor supports the German war effort. When hurt or sick, the Germans place them into the infirmary to return them to work status or to eliminate them if maintenance exceeds the cost-benefit ratio. How the doctors and nurses fit into the camp scheme becomes Levi’s study when an injury sends him to Ka-Be.
Other prisoners agreed that the accident was waiting to happen. The arduous work assignment involved two men transporting heavy iron beams the length of a football field over wet terrain. Working with Null Achtzehn was universally avoided. The young man had become an automaton, a mechanical slave, with such advanced indifference as to be a danger to himself and others. Levi comes to associate the music of Auschwitz with the goal of turning all of them into automatons. Among the men of the camp, whether prisoner or overseer, an individual’s work capability conveys or undermines their status. The nurses who triage Levi for admission into Ka-Be take one look at his number and identify him as part of the Italian Jews who arrived two months prior. He is associated with their reputation of being white-collar lawyers who do not know how to work. The nurse’s prediction that Levi is headed for the gas chamber reflects the cruelty of the camp masters.
This observation stays with Levi. The Ka-Be infirmary represents a respite for the sick and injured from the bitter cold, hard work, and frequent beatings. Patients have time for conversations and Levi brings up the subject of the crematoriums with a couple of older men who have been at the camp longer. When Levi rejects the evidence Schmulek presents for the existence of the gas chambers, Schmulek concludes that Levi chooses willing ignorance rather than face the truth. Schmulek’s own departure from Ka-Be becomes the evidence Levi must accept.
With memories comes reflection on the changes he has undergone and what the Lager has taken away from him. Much more injurious to his life than physical illness is the insidious erosion of his personality. He decides personality must always be guarded against extinction, both at home in complacency as much as in the prison during adversity.
