Journal #15: Chapter 15

Primo Levi is chosen as one of the three workers who can work in the Laboratory. His new work site is warm and clean. His work is much easier than before and he no longer suffers from the cold winter.

Auschwitz was a place where people’s lives were determined by luck. If I were lucky, then I would have been able to survive. But if I were unlucky, then I would have been probably sent to a gas chamber. The motif of luck frequently appears in the book. For example, Primo Levi was lucky enough that he wasn’t sent to a gas chamber right after he arrived at Auschwitz. Once again, he was lucky that he earned an opportunity to work as a specialist, a chemist. Later on, as it is written in this chapter, he works in a warm laboratory. However, some people were unlucky that they were chosen to die in gas chambers during the selection in October, 1944. Likewise, in Auschwitz, people’s destinies were often determined by luck. Even if the men did the same thing, let’s say, forbidden exchange of possession, some were caught and punished while some were not.

However, Auschwitz was not the only place where people’s lives were determined by luck. The world we now live in is also an unfair place. Although it is not as vicious as Auschwitz was, but it isn’t still fair for everybody. A lot of times, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Also, the result of work is not always directly proportional to the amount of efforts that was put into.

I’ve faced the unfairness of the world several times. Every time I sense it, I become depressed because I used to believe that people will be able to get what they strive for if they wholeheartedly want it and if they work for it really hard. But whenever I see the unfairness, I think that maybe my understanding of the world is not the right statement.

However, on the other corner of my heart, I still believe that nothing is impossible (or maybe, I want to believe that nothing is impossible). I still hope that if I really try hard, then I will be able to overcome the unfairness of the world. Therefore, in order to deny the unfairness, I often tell myself that my efforts were not good enough and that I must try harder and harder, so my destiny wouldn’t be determined by luck as it was in Auschwitz.


Memorable Quotes:
“Many comrades congratulate us; Alberto first of all, with genuine joy, without a shadow of envy. Alberto holds nothing against my fortune, he is really very pleased, both because of our friendship and because he will also gain from it” (138).

“We know what we look like: we see each other and sometimes we happen to see our reflection in a clean window” (142).