His life was taken out of his own hands and put in the hands of evil. He spent two long and torturous years at Auschwitz before the Russian army freed the remaining prisoners. While reading Levi's story, I was in shock not only because of the circumstances the Jews had to face, but also because of how they treated one another. "We have learnt, on the other hand, that everything can be stolen, in fact is automatically stolen as soon as attention is relaxed; and to avoid this, we had to learn the art of sleeping with our head on a bundle made up of our jacket and containing all our belongings, from the bowl to the shoes"(Levi 33). How could one steal from another? It is something I can't comprehend. I would think they would be more considerate and helpful towards one another, rather than have to protect themselves from one another. I guess everyone was just trying to survive, and if that meant to steal from one of your fellow Jews, so be it. Yet the way I see it is if one was to steal from his fellow Jew, he was therefore possibly giving him less of a chance to survive, so he himself can survive. In a way he's assisting in his fellow Jews death. I can understand how one can be selfish and greedy in times like this. They only posses such minute amounts of belongings and to be greedy with all they have is understandable. These people were scared and fearful of what each day may bring them, but I can't grasp the idea of one stealing from another who is going through the same thing. I would think they would have more sympathy for one another. .
The thing that shocked me the most is what I read in the short story, "The Block of Death." This is a story about a young girl, Cyla, who was transported to Auschwitz from Slovakia in 1941. However, during roll call of her transport, Cyla was selected by the officer in charge of roll call to be the female prisoner in charge of the block.