Critical Analysis of ‘The Story of Ten Days’

Critical Analysis of ‘The Story of Ten Days’

Holocaust ended more than a lifetime ago.  However, the horrific extermination of millions of Europe's Jews is still fresh in many people's minds. The feeling of hatred and remorse continue to manifest in a new generation of Jews in the Middle East and other parts of the globe.  It is not surprising that the subject is considered a taboo in most circles including amongst Germany’s population. The concern for a likelihood of its recurrence surpasses racial lines or religious faiths. Many people feel that the inhumane holocaust acts can never be justified. Primo Levi’s The Story of Ten Days attempts to capture events as they happened during the fateful moment.

For the past sixty years, holocaust survivors, readers, and writers try to answer a question on how authors should capture devastating wartime events with sensitivity and honesty. It is hard to address such events and their repercussions, especially if the writer is a victim laden with feelings of horror and shock. Often, memoirists and survivors of war crimes face a challenge of putting forth an accurate account of events without a taint on the facts and meanings especially with fervor and remnants of their memories.

For decades, post-war literature has yielded a myriad of potential answers. Primo Levi's account demonstrates a heightened level of historical knowledge because he reveals holocaust as it unfolds. Levi utilizes a moving, dignified and lyrical tone to narrate the events that took place in the Jewish camp a few days before Russian soldiers stormed and rescued survivors.  He favors a poetic approach to recount his time in Nazi Germany as he attempts to engage readers more closely with the experiences.  There is no doubt that his text unifies people of all denominations, ages, and backgrounds. The sense of universal truth and absurdity in his tone makes universalizes the holocaust horrors hence exposing aspects of humanity steadfast between generations and nations time and oceans alike.

Levi adds weight to his tone by including a variety of languages used in the camp. He accompanies them with little translation if any. As a writer, he seeks to inform readers that the camp hardly protected non-Germans. In fact, he allows readers to see through his eyes, to feel his sense of exclusion and abandonment. The tone betrays moments of deep human connection thus awakening the feelings of confusion, frustration and panic in readers just as Levi did at the time. Nevertheless, the writers way of inviting readers into holocaust atmosphere through his tone promotes discovery rather than truth obstruction. 

Levi compels all readers beyond his generation via a narrative raw tone. The tone has a matter-of-fact sense with a little evidence of restraint. Considering the subject matter, his voice at times shifts to a guilt-ridden or impassioned sentimental tone but make readers feel excluded and uncomfortable. Today, the holocaust is widely regarded as an incomprehensible and horrific event, and Levi’s omission of such tones and claims from his memoir displays a trust in reader’s compassion and intellect. Instead, the writer chooses an honest tone: so sincere that it breaks at absurdity points which show Levi’s own incredulity at the story’s contents. He invites the readers to attain a new level of understanding. The moments of absurdity let the readers have a glimpse into writer’s specific case, his instinctive reactions to Auschwitz events as well as his psyche.  The use of a sentimental tone is permissible because readers are able to feel an expansion of shame and pity as they already anticipate from a piece of post-holocaust literature.

From his tone, there is evidence that Levi is beginning to accept his psychological abuse and constant excruciating pain inflicted by the merciless Nazis. He treats small injustices like unfathomable blessings. It is understandable, however, that an overwhelming majority of The Story of Ten Days readers that have never been subjected to such impossibly trying experiences view Levi’s musings as absurd. Absurd comments mostly hinder authors’ credibility but in this case, it helps to strengthen readers’ understanding of the author’s mindset before, after and during his stay at the camp.

There will always be a huge portion of holocaust we can’t and will never decipher nor understand. It is true that most people are grateful for the oblivion: the blissful absence of first-hand encounter and knowledge of the planet's worst crimes against mankind and crimes at the heart of human nature. Nonetheless, it is every reader's responsibility to seek an understanding as much as possible and to the victims and villains. Levi ends The Story of Ten Days in a tone filled with a fragile, quiet sense of hope—he hopes against all odds that humankind will retrace its footsteps to humanity. Levi states that “After a few minutes it was obvious that the camp had been struck. Two huts were burning fiercely, another two had been pulverized, but they were all empty. […] The Germans were no longer there.  The towers were empty” (Levi 157). This symbolizes the end of Nazi mistreatment and a hope for a new life amidst chaos. It is this hopeful tone that qualifies Levi’s work as one of the greatest post-war literature exploring human nature, error and the terrible consequences that ensue should humans fail to understand each other.

Works Cited

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996: 150-167.