Is it possible to put a price on life? I do not mean somebody else’s life but one’s own. Can a definite price be set on life, or is it priceless? That is, does life have a value beyond any price? If so, then it is all right knowingly to send other people to be gassed, those prisoners who had been deprived by the almighty Germans of the right to live. Moreover, when death is inevitable is there any point in fighting for life? Is there really such a thing as a meaningful death? Is it better for a human being to face death, knowing that he is about to die, or is it better when death comes upon him suddenly, snuffing him out before he realizes what is happening?
In Auschwitz, a place where death was palpable, where the air was filled with death groans, those questions flowed through our minds continuously. For us these were not merely academic questions. The way you answered these questions determined the way you behaved toward other people, including those who were condemned to death. Those who asserted, “I want to live at any price,” would put even their own parents into the car that was going to the crematorium. On the other hand, parents who wanted to live at any price put their small children into valises and then cast the valises aside. Those who asserted, “My life is priceless,” dragged out prisoners who were hiding during the selection so that they themselves would be able to escape the danger.
It seems odd, but in Auschwitz everybody wanted to live. Suicides were very rare. In this terrible world there was room for hope and dreams. The most beautiful images of life after the war shimmered in the mind’s eye. We imagined that after the war people would be richer for the experience and would create a paradise on earth, without wars and without persecution. Is it any wonder that everyone wanted to see the defeat of Germany and the world that would come into being after that took place? The real challenge was to find the will to overcome the animal instinct of survival at all cost, as reflected in the cynical proverb “Better a living dog than a dead lion,” and to avoid being sucked into the pervasive bestiality.
Is it better for a human being to know that he is about to die? I remember living through a bombing while I was in the forest near Slonim. I was so totally exhausted after my escape from Bialystok that I fell asleep in the midst of danger. Every time a bomb exploded I would wake up and say to myself, “Don’t sleep. You will not even know when death comes.” In Auschwitz I sometimes wondered whether this might not be the significance of the nightly prayer: “Grant me light, oh Lord, lest I sleep the sleep of death.” The meaning of that prayer to the Lord is to protect one from unexpected death during the watches of the night so that a human being may be conscious and bid farewell to life.
Magda, a small Slovak who worked with us in the infirmary, tried to convince us that she experienced her greatest suffering when she watched people going to the gas chambers without knowing what was awaiting them.
“Let them at least know where they are going. Every human being has the right to a conscious death,” said Magda.
“What benefit will accrue to them from knowing where they are going?” we answered. “They will only suffer longer.”
“Let them suffer, but let them die like human beings. Our responsibility is to tell them about it.”