15, 16 & 17 "Die Drei Leute vom Labor", "The Last One", "The Story of Ten Days"

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

Goals for today 

Considering "Die Drei Leute von Labor" and survival 

The last ten days in the camp and reporting of the camp liberation 

Survivor's guilt and Levi's death in 1987

Extract analysis 

Concepts Literature HL

Concepts to consider in the memoir:

Identity, control, humanity, language and morality 

 

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Conceptual question

How does loss of humanity through control affect our identity and morality?

"Die Drei Leute von Labor" 

Levi will be able to work in a heated laboratory over the winter, which will protect him and help to save him​; however, “the continuous dull underground rumbling of the front which is getting nearer”. Buna is dying: “silent and stiff like an enormous corpse”​

The camp is now filling up again with prisoners arriving from other camps in east Poland: most chillingly, “the majority leave immediately for Birkenau and the Chimney” 

The threat of death is now a constant presence:​

• The selections​
  
• Russian air raids​
  
• Freezing to death in the snow​
  
• Starving or working to death 
• Having the camp “liquidated”​
  

"Die Drei Leute von Labor" 

What are the benefits of working in the lab? 

Make a list in your class notebook. 

• He may get leather shoes (not definitive that he gets them) 
• Increase temperature in the daytime
  
• Protected from the weather during the day 
  
• "New" clothes 
  
• Weekly shave 
  
• Can steal commodities to gain food and other items in the camp 
  
• Stealing also helps his friends Alberto and Lorenzo
  
• The work humanises him 
• He has the opportunity to write down his experiences this could help him to ease his trauma.

Are there any disadvantages? 

"Die Drei Leute van Labor" 

" My comrades in the Kommando envy me, and they are right; should I not be contented? But in the morning, I hardly escape the raging wind and cross the doorstep of the Laboratory when I find at my side the comrade of all my peaceful moments, of Ka-Be, of the rest-Sundays - the pain of remembering, the old ferocious suffering of feeling myself a man again, which attacks me like a dog the moment my conscience comes out of the gloom. Then I take my pencil and notebook and write what I would never dare tell anyone." p. 157

Are there any disadvantages? 

Goals for today 

"The Story of Ten Days" and survival 

The last ten days in the camp and reporting of the camp liberation 

Survivor's guilt and Levi's death in 1987

Extract analysis 

Rate the word 1 to 4

1. I do not know the word, and I have never seen it before. 

2. I've heard or seen the word before, but I'm not sure what it means. 

3. I know the word and can recognise and understand it while reading, but I probably wouldn't feel comfortable using it in writing or speech. 

4. I know the word well and can use it correctly in writing or speech. 

Melancholic 

Word of the day

Melancholic (adj) - expressing feelings of sadness

Are there character(s) or events that we have met in our literary explorations that you could describe as melancholic ? 

she becomes quite melancholic when she reflects on all the lost opportunities of her life

Act 1

Concepts  

If This is a Man 

Concepts we generated (top 5): 

Dehumanisation, survival, oppression, the human condition, morality

Literary concepts Literature HL

Literary concepts to consider in the memoir:

Structure, tone, stylistic choices, rhetorical devices

 

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"The Story of Ten Days" 

Claim: The style and structure of this part of the memoir is different from the body of the memoir. 

The pace becomes faster because life is moving forward again.

The focus shifts from dehumanisation to recovery.

More dialogue and action reflect renewed human relationships.

Hope returns, though suffering is not forgotten.

The ending demonstrates the gradual restoration of humanity.

"The Story of Ten Days" 

The BBC’s war correspondent Richard Dimbleby made a famously harrowing live radio report on entering the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 19th Apr 1945.

The BBC refused to broadcast it as it was so graphic. Dimbleby threatened to resign and this forced the BBC to relent. 

Listen to the report. Note any visceral or unusual imagery used in this report. 

"The Story of Ten Days" 

Sentence structure (Long or short? Formal or conversational? etc)

Narrative pace (Slow and reflective? Faster and action-driven?)

Tone (Detached? Hopeful? Despairing? Energetic?)

Focus (Survival in the camp? Rebuilding life after liberation?)

www.bbc.com

Survivor's guilt

Survivor’s guilt is a particular kind of guilt that develops in people who have survived a life-threatening situation. ​

• Some survivors feel guilty that they survived when others died. ​
  
• Others believe they could have done more to save the lives of others. ​
  
• Some feel guilty that another person died saving them.​
  

Survivor's guilt 

The features of survivor’s guilt are well documented and can include:​

anxiety and depression, ​

intellectual impairment, ​

social withdrawal, ​

sleep disturbance, nightmares and insomnia 

physical complaints ​

eventual suicide, often years after the event​

Many Holocaust survivors never wanted to see each other again as they could not bear what they had done to survive, and did not wish to be reminded​

Survivor's guilt 

Read the article titled " The Sense of guilt within Holocaust survivors​". To be found in MB files => If This is a Man 

In this article, the author argues that there are THREE factors at work to create survivor’s guilt in Holocaust survivors; what are they?

Pay close attention to the examples of survivor’s guilt given​. How do they illustrate the symptoms of survivor's guilt. 

Write your answers in your Class notebook (Teams) 

Levi's survivor guilt 

Levi’s first major bout of depression was in 1963. He was prescribed drugs but they had mixed results. ​His final bout of depression was in 1987. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: ​

“I have fallen into a rather serious depression; I have lost all interest in writing and even in reading. I am extremely low and I do not want to see anyone. I ask you as a 'Proper Doctor' what should I do? I feel the need for help but I do not know what sort”.​ 

On 11th April 1987, he fell from a third-floor landing in his Turin apartment and died instantly.​

Some have argued it was suicide, but he left no note, he had no will, and he had made short and medium term plans with others. ​

It has been argued that it was an accident. He was on medication that lowered blood pressure and can cause dizziness and loss of balance.​

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Levi's survivor guilt 

Read the article "Primo Levi's Last Moments" 

Take notes 

To bear witness

Precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilisation.