The Drowned and the Saved

Levi divides people who have experienced prison life, or other harsh circumstances, into two groups: those who talk about their experiences and those who keep it to themselves. Levi acknowledges the validity of both reactions and explains that those who speak often do so because they are asked to speak by “friends, children, readers, or even strangers” (169) who want to understand what happened. He acknowledges the challenges of this position; after all, those who speak are untrained witnesses to human history, not “historians nor philosophers” (169-170).

One persistent question, or collection of questions, has to do with escape, rebellion, or some other method of avoiding the difficult truth. At first, Levi explains, an optimism can be observed in persons for whom “the idea of imprisonment is firmly attached to the idea of flight or revolt” (171), especially because “escape cleanses and wipes out the shame of imprisonment” (171). Levi points out complications around these ideas. For example, Soviet prisoners of war “should have died instead of [surrender]” (171) and Japanese wartime soldiers gave up only to be “regarded with great contempt” (171). According to popular stories and films, a “typical prisoner is seen as a man of integrity” (172) whose ingenuity and resilience were eventually rewarded, an image that has little to do with the reality Levi and his fellow prisoners faced while in the Lagers.