Thank you for sharing this, I liked it a lot. It reminds me of something from, I think, Primo Levi that I saw in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' Haggadah.
Levi describes being one of a bunch of concentration camp prisoners who were left behind as the Nazis retreated. They were too sick to move and, apparently, the Nazis didn't even bother to kill them, just leaving them to die. After a day or so, one prisoner shared his only ration, a crust of bread, with another prisoner, one who was more ill than he. In the camps, no one ever shared bread; rations were so meagre that to share food was to commit suicide. Levi describes this sudden moment of altruistic sharing as the point when they became human beings again instead of the objects the Nazis had treated them as.
Thanks so much, Daniel. I wonder if this is the passage from Levi:
“Once the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and then Towarowski (a Franco-Pole of twenty-three, with typhus) proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to the three of us who had been working. And so it was agreed. Only a day before, such an event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager said “Eat your own bread, and, if you can, that of your neighbor,” and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the Lager was dead. This was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment marked the start of the process by which we who had not died slowly turned from Häftlinge into men again.”
Levi, Primo. The Complete Works of Primo Levi (pp. 152-153). Liveright. Kindle Edition.
Thank you for sharing this, I liked it a lot. It reminds me of something from, I think, Primo Levi that I saw in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' Haggadah.
Levi describes being one of a bunch of concentration camp prisoners who were left behind as the Nazis retreated. They were too sick to move and, apparently, the Nazis didn't even bother to kill them, just leaving them to die. After a day or so, one prisoner shared his only ration, a crust of bread, with another prisoner, one who was more ill than he. In the camps, no one ever shared bread; rations were so meagre that to share food was to commit suicide. Levi describes this sudden moment of altruistic sharing as the point when they became human beings again instead of the objects the Nazis had treated them as.
Thanks so much, Daniel. I wonder if this is the passage from Levi:
“Once the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and then Towarowski (a Franco-Pole of twenty-three, with typhus) proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to the three of us who had been working. And so it was agreed. Only a day before, such an event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager said “Eat your own bread, and, if you can, that of your neighbor,” and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the Lager was dead. This was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment marked the start of the process by which we who had not died slowly turned from Häftlinge into men again.”
Levi, Primo. The Complete Works of Primo Levi (pp. 152-153). Liveright. Kindle Edition.
Yes, sorry I garbled it, I was quoting from memory!
I thought you described this anecdote very well. Thank you for reminding me of it!