Majority and Minority Group, Research Paper Example

Majority And Minority Group Relations Within A Nation-State: Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi’s depiction of concentration camp life in Survival in Auschwitz is a pertinent primary historical source, according to the first-hand account it presents of the life of detainees in a Nazi German Concentration Camp. While describing the horrors of such a life, the book simultaneously evokes questions concerning human existence, such as the following: how is such a life possible? Certainly, the answer to this question is political, insofar as the possibility of this life is directly tied to Levi’s status as a Jewish minority within the Third Reich. In the context of a political analysis considering the Nation-state’s relation to its minority population, according to the specificity of Levi’s text one can argue that an integral part of the Nazi German Nation-state was a clear policy of oppression directed against these minorities. Yet Levi’s account suggests a treatment that is beyond oppression: rather the experiences of Levi recall the dehumanization of the minority group, to the extent that they can no longer even be considered a part of the nation-state. This thesis may be supported by considering various scenes from Levi’s own work: they indicate a political policy within certain nation-states to maintain the rights of the majority through not only a mistreatment of minorities, but through their dehumanization and ultimate extermination. In the following essay, we shall examine one scene from Levi’s text to think through the relation between nation-states and their constitutive elements of majority and minority groups.

One of the most lucid scenes depicting the status of minorities from Survival in Auschwitz is Levi’s account of the tattooing of the inmates in the Lagercamp. This vignette recalls both the political and the existential themes present in Levi’s work. Levi writes: “I have learnt that I am a Haftling. My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.” (Levi 22) The general aim of this quote is to emphasize the dual criminalization and dehumanization of the minority group. The terminology of Haftling is the direct German word for prisoner; as such, to be a part of the minority group is equivalent to having the status of criminal. Hence, the minority group is immediately distinguished from the majority population: It is an explicit recognition of the diminished status within the Reich of the minority group, particularly the Jews. The criminal status conferred to the Jews implies that the Jews are prisoners for a legal or criminal reason, as justified by Nazi jurisprudence; nevertheless, this criminal status is the direct result of the ethnicity of the inmates.

Of course, when examining this scene according to minority and majority group relations, one must necessarily note the particularity of Nazi Germany and Nazi jurisprudence. Within this nation-state, it was sufficient to have the status of a particular minority, such as Jew, and, accordingly, become a prisoner. As such, one cannot entirely describe the Jew as a minority group within Germany, to the extent that the importance of such jurisprudence and ideology is underscored; rather the Jew is a de jure prisoner and a de facto unwanted member fo the general society. While to further develop this point would require a return to the primary sources of both Nazi jurisprudence and Nazi ideology, Levi’s account makes clear the important delineation between the German majority and the non-German minority within the Third Reich.

Certainly, the decision to tattoo the prisoners may also be viewed in terms of the notion that the majority Germans perceived the minority Jews as threats to the Nation-state and their possibility for self-determination. While Levi acknowledges that part of the logic for the prisoners being tattooed is for logistical purposes – “only by ‘showing one’s number’ can one get bread and soup.” (Levi 22) – there are multiple concepts that may be read into this process. Firstly, the tattoo clearly suggests that the majority Nation-state conceived the minority groups as a threat. In the case of the escape of the prisoner, the tattoo would function as a distinguishing mark, making his minority status visible to the majority population. Moreover, as Levi notes, that the tattoo will remain with the prisoner until death suggests the lifelong criminal status applied to the minority group in the Nazi State.

Above all, the tattoo scene expresses the dehumanization central to Levi’s account. Nevertheless, where can such a dehumanization be located within the terms of any possible discourse? From the perspective of the Nazi State, it could be deemed that the threat of a minority group was posited to be so great that it required the criminalization, dehumanization and extermination of the latter. In other words, the Nazi Nation-state functioned according to a clear policy decision: that the majority within the Nation-state must essentially remove the minority group from its society. As Levi describes it, tattooing recalled “the funereal sciences of the numbers of Auschwitz, which epitomize the stages of destruction of European Judaism.” (Levi 22) The sequential order of numbers recalls the history of the German policy against the Jews, and the gradual destruction of an entirety minority group. The liquidation thus takes the form of a planned political program.

Certainly, the self-determination of the German Reich appears to be a clear motive in the dehumanization and extermination of European Jewry. The ideological or jurisprudential reasons for this decision are largely absent from Levi’s text, insofar as his text falls within the genre of historical testimony; his aim is to depict life in the concentration camp and denote its processes of dehumanization. Nevertheless, according to this dehumanization, the testimonial source of Levi’s text certainly indicates the lack of desire for the Nazi Reich to respect the conditions of a minority group, insofar as it viewed the dehumanization of this minority group as integral to its own unique political programme. The tattooing scene from Levi’s text provides a dark synopsis of ideological and political motifs of exclusion and liquidation. However, from such a source one cannot go on to recapitulate the diversity of nation-states and the relations of majorities to minorities. Rather, Levi’s text provides a first-hand view of what occurs when majority groups in nation-states decide to exercise their own self-determination through the criminalization, dehumanization and destruction of a minority group.

Works Cited

Levi, Primo. If This Is A Man? London, UK: Orion Press, 1959.