payment page
Chapter 8, This Side of Good and Evil
Summary
Levi elaborates on the well-developed system of clandestine barter in the Lager. He discusses the operation on two fronts, an individual level and a corporate level. As an example of its working at the personal level, he dissects how the Wäschetauschen, or laundry swap, facilitates a thriving traffic in goods. This periodic replacement of underclothes is intended for disinfection of clothing. The random redistribution of the washed clothing in various states from new to patched to shredded establishes a level playing field and equal access to the assets. Hungry prisoners trade their shirts for food.
The prohibited transactions take place in the Exchange Market, which is staffed by professional merchants. Foremost among them are the Greek Jews, who offer bowls of thick soup, the product of their ingenuity and collaborative spirit. Those who have two shirts can trade to an inmate who wants extra warmth. Besides soup and shirts, goods for barter include a crude tobacco called Mahorca; turnips, carrots, and potatoes; prize coupons issued by Buna to the best workers, which are redeemable for entry to the Frauenblock, or brothel; gold fillings; light-bulbs; soap; files; pliers; sacks; nails; and petrol for the lighters secretly made by Lager craftsmen. The system extends outside of the camps into the community, establishing a connection between the internal economy of the Lager and that of the outside world. A shortage of Mahorca in the local town results in a flow of tobacco from Buna. Civilians found participating in the transactions face incarceration in separate blocks of the camp and do hard labor in separate Kommandos.
At the corporate level, the antipathy between the SS command and the private enterprise authorities of the Buna creates a network of thefts from the Buna workplace. Camp authorities ignore Häftlings smuggling tools and materials for barter in the Lager. Strategic restriction of essential goods such as grease for the daily required shining of shoes encourages the supply through theft and barter. Ka-Be is the intended beneficiary of the transfer of materials from the Buna workplace via the pockets of the Häftlings.
Analysis
By referring to good and evil as having sides, Levi draws attention to the Lager civilization driven by pragmatic self-interest. The Buna rubber plant stands for industry in Levi’s portrait of the military-industrial complex in Nazi Germany sustained by the foreign slave labor and shows the tension between the SS and German industrialists. The complex economic system of the concentration camps is based on strategic deprivation by the SS administrators that support and encourage smuggling from the civilian contractors. Seen from “this side of the barbed wire” looking out at the free world, the pressures to survive the Nazis’ slave system twists concepts of justice.
That a vibrant capitalistic system of supply and demand could function within the blocks at Auschwitz testifies to human ingenuity and resourcefulness. Driven by constant hunger, the inmates look for ways to stay alive. They assess the risk-reward potential of transactions. For example, a Häftling caught without a shirt under his jacket will have to endure beatings but will get a new shirt. What few possessions they could call their own they consider strategic assets. The shirts off their backs and their rations of bread have universal value. Craftsmen fabricate crude but useful items such as lighters. Levi submits that the most powerful driver of the concentration camp economy was Ka-Be, the infirmary. The nurses send back on the Exchange Market all the possessions confiscated from their patients at discharge. This includes the spoon necessary to eat the food ration of soup that keeps inmates alive. In addition to these items for barter, Ka-Be sets aside forty extra pints of soup to acquire essential supplies such as smuggled tubing for enemas and stomach pumping, thermometers, glass instruments and chemicals, and paper and writing instruments. Death feeds the marketplace in the ever-shrinking circle of the prison populace.
