Journal #2: Chapter 2

In chapter 2, I felt that the men who arrived in the Buna were in fact no longer men. They’ve lost all of their possessions, values and purpose in life. The SS men took away their clothes, shoes and even their names. On page 27, Primo Levi wrote, “They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as were, still remains.” We often think that name is simply what we call each other. However, name contains deeper meanings. A name of a person can tell us what kind of person he/she is. It indicates the person’s personality and belief. When we hear someone’s name, we can associate the name with certain impression of that person. I think we are responsible for our names. We should try to behave well, so we would be able to create positive impression when others hear our names.

Since name represents who we are, taking our names away is very dangerous. Without the name, we may lose our identity. I think this is what had happened to the men in the Buna. They’ve lost their name, their identity. Their new identity was the number (such as 174517) which meant nothing more than a worker in the Buna. Maintaining their names and their identity would have been really hard for the men in Auschwitz due to the circumstances. The SS men completely manipulated the men. Even the presence of SS men exhausted men and made them feel useless. In this situation, I think the men were very vulnerable and likely to forget their identity. Primo Levi wrote, “He who loses all often easily loses himself” (27).

I think many people “lose themselves” nowadays, too. But the causes are not the same ones that Primo Levi encountered. Today, the causes of losing oneself may be interactions with different people, peer pressure, influence of society. For example, many teenage girls want to be thin because the world tells them that skinny girls are beautiful. Instead of focusing on who they are truly, they pay more attention to their physical body. As a result, many of them feel insecure and do not know their identity. I think among the living people, many of them are not truly living. They all breathe, eat and sleep but they unsure of their identity. I wonder if they know who they are. When others hear their names, what kind of impressions would their names convey?

Memorable Quotes:
“Arbeit Marcht Frei, work gives freedom” (22).

“There is nowhere to look in a mirror, but our appearance stands in front of us, reflected in a hundred livid faces, in a hundred miserable and sordid puppets. We are transformed into the phantoms glimpsed yesterday evening” (26).

“… he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself” (27).

“For months and years, the problem of the remote future has grown pale to them and has lost all intensity in face of the far more urgent and concrete problems of the near future: how much one will eat today, if it will snow, if there will be coal to unload” (36).

“But men are rarely logical when their own fate is at stake” (36).

“It was better not to think” (37).