"Oh, if one could only cry! Oh, if one could only affront the wind as we once used to, on equal terms, and not as we do here, like cringing dogs.
We are outside and everyone picks up his lever. Renyk drops his head between his shoulders, pulls his beret over his ears and lifts his face up to the low grey sky where the inexorable snow swirls around: 'Si j'avey une chien, je ne le chasse pas dehors.'"
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Chapter six describes the everyday labour work in Auschwitz. Just reading the various sufferings that Primo Levi had to go through emphasizes how lucky we are to be living in a world where everything would be a luxury, compared to the situations of concentration camps in WWII. Just yesterday, while I was busy doing my biology homework at three o'clock in the morning, I remember complaining about how my back ached, how tired I was, and how much I wanted to go to sleep. I wonder how these people felt while they were doing their work. They probably wanted to stretch their backs, get some food and a sip of water, and rest. Perhaps maybe they were so tired that thoughts of "I'd rather die than continue doing this," ran through their heads. But, camp life does not allow any of that. The Nazis had managed to reduce the Jews as small as possible, so that they could do nothing without permission; permission to rest, permission to eat, permission to stop, permission to when to go to bed, etc. In a way, they were dogs, and the SS soldiers had become their masters.
Why bother to think? Why bother to complain? Why bother to do anything except what they tell us to do? What's the point? Complaining and whining never helped anyone. It just earned more slaps. It won't help. Nothing will anymore... We are doomed to do this until we die. Death... We cannot even choose when to die. It might be tomorrow, a few weeks later, or maybe a year. They choose. We have no choices. We are left in this hopeless camp, and no one will help. No one will care. No one will know...
If I was a Jew, I would have thought like that.
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