Question

10- Take a closer look at this sentence, and provide us with an in-depth explanation of its message. “I might be alive in the place of another; I might have usurped, that is, in fact, killed. The “saved” of the Lager were not the best, those predestined to got good the beares of a message: what I had seen and lived through proved the exact contrary. Preferably the worst survived, the selfish, the violence, the insensitive, the collaborators of the “gray zone,” the spies…. I felt innocent, yes, but enrolled among the saved and therefore in permanent search of justification in my own eyes and those of others.” (Levi)

Answer 1

These lines have been taken from "The Drowned and the Saved" by Primo Levi. Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish and a survivor of the atrocity to the Jews. The lines mention the dilemma of the author. Through these lines the author expresses search for his innocence. He mentions that he was is alive because somebody in his place have died. Those who died were good people because they did not trick anybody into death, or helped the perpetuators to save themselves for another day. He has seen how inmates of the "gray zone" would use deception and violence to keep their life safe and willingly let others killed. Hence, he believes that those who have survived the atrocity are the worst ones. So he doubts his innocence and is in constant search of his innocence because he too has survived the atrocity.