Moments of reprieve Book

Primo Levi's life was saved by these things



He was a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz but he was working as a chemist in the laboratory attached to the huge chemical plant there. (They didn't pay him very well. In fact, they didn't pay him at all.) In January 1945 he was looking around for something, anything, he could steal from the lab to trade for bread. Like all other prisoners, he was starving. He saw a dozen pipettes. He had no idea if anyone would trade for them but what the hell. He went to see a Polish male nurse who worked in the infirmary. Although most prisoners in Auschwitz were killed, still many were kept alive to do essential work, so there was an infirmary. The male nurse wasn't much interested in the pipettes but what the hell, they might come in useful. But it was late in the day, there was no bread left. So he offered half a bowl of soup.

Who could have left half a bowl of soup in that reign of hunger? Almost certainly someone who had died half way through the meal.

Primo takes the soup back to his barracks and shares it with his friend Alberto. The two Italian Jews discuss whether they can risk eating the soup. The person who's soup this was had most likely died a couple of hours ago of scarlet fever, which was at the time the Auschwitz disease of the week. That would be why someone else hadn't already eaten it. It was infected, probably. Alberto wasn't bothered, he'd had scarlet fever as a child, but Primo hadn't. But the starving tend to bend the rules on such matters so Primo ate the soup too. And a couple of days later he got scarlet fever. So a week later, when the order came to destroy Auschwitz and move all prisoners back into Germany, Primo was in the infirmary. Now, the order was to liquidate all prisoners who couldn't walk, but in the chaos of the last days of Auschwitz this order was overlooked or ignored - well, those in the infirmary, they'll all be dead soon, let's not waste bullets on them. Something like that. On the 18th January 1945 the SS herded about 60,000 prisoners out of the camp on one of the famous Death Marches. One of them was Alberto. Hardly any of them survived. On the 25th January the Red Army entered Auschwitz, and Primo, who had managed not to die in the preceding week, was rescued. Because of the pipettes.