BOOKS
635
through the camp gates at the end of the war. The ftrst thing that many of
them did was hunt down the kapos in hiding and kill them. Among the
others, there must be few who did not do something that would make it
hard for them to write a book about their lives. Are these survivors somehow
less worthy than the Survivor? The most difficult thing for me to accept
about Des Pres's book is that the answer to that question is, implicitly, yes.
The reason for this-it is the same thing that accounts for the impres–
sion that only those with strength and purity of soul did in fact survive–
is the system of moral values, in no way different from those of the Duke of
Albany, that permeates the book. For what Des Pres seems
to
be saying,
again and again, is that' 'survival
depends
on staying human":
In our group we shared everything; and the moment one of the group
ate something without sharing it , we knew it was the beginning of the
end for him.
A Treblinka Survivor
We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate . The same
smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another.
It
is the only way
to
survive.
An Auschwitz inmate
When Des Pres connects the many instances of help and sharing to bio–
logical imperatives, so that the outbursts of goodness are like grass respond–
ing to sunlight- "Most survivors simply found themselves helping each
other, as if by instinct, as if in answer to a need. Their experience suggests ,
in fact, that when conditions become extreme
a need to help
arises" -then
it is impossible not to think, with Albany, that it is the bad who are destined
to
perish and that the good shall be rewarded with life .
I wish I could believe this . I want to. I almost can. But there are
problems, still. Here is a well-known statement from Eugen Kogen:
There were two possibilities and within three months it became
apparent which one would apply. By that time a man would have gone
into an almost irresistable mental decline-if, indeed, he had not
already perished in a physical sense ; or he would have begun to adapt
himself to the concentration camp .
Is it not possible-perhaps even likely-that precisely the most sensitive, the
most civilized, those with the closest ties to family and friends, would be
least able or willing
to
"adapt"
to
Buchenwald? The plain truth is that a
good job, a friend ladling soup, and above all luck, luck, and more luck
were at least as likely
to
lead to survival as the possession of the nature of a
saint . Giancarlo Giannini, in Wertmuller's excellent
Seven Beauties,
him-
