The story of a 15 year old boy who ends up in concentration camps, not a story like the others we have already read or seen. It is optimistic but harsh, naive but not stupid. Imre tries to grasp the logic of the illogical, to give all events a place in his own fate, to preserve his freedom, but above all: He tries to pass the time. Here is a philosophical discussion of the book
Le differend
According to Lyotard, every order brings with it differends (disputes), these are the negatives of the prevailing order, they indicate its boundaries. These disputes were always covered up as best as possible. However, some disputes are unmistakable, including Auschwitz. Auschwitz is the great dispute in Hegel’s history. Hegel sees history as a process in which everything contributes to the increase of reason and freedom. The Holocaust cannot possibly fit into this vision of history, its meaninglessness constitutes an irresolvable conflict with the grand narrative of history.
In the concentration camps there is a logic that is completely different from that of modernity , a logic that seems incomprehensible to the logical person. However, what happens if you end up in such a concentration camp? This is perfectly clarified in this book. We see how the main character tries to adapt to the new system he finds himself in and tries to understand the logic of the illogical and ultimately manages to understand it. So we see that even the illogical can be logical, that the human mind is more powerful than we think.
Language and reality
It is very striking that at the end of the book, when the main character is once again a free man, he seems to have more difficulties than before. He finds it difficult to explain his view of the situation in the concentration camps to outsiders. It seems as if they live in another world and cannot possibly imagine what life in a camp was like. He seems to understand things completely differently than these people. He is an ex-deportee and only those who are can see the Holocaust as it really was.
According to logical atomism, our everyday language is based on logic and the structure of logic reflects the structure of reality. When we find ourselves in a different reality, with a different logic, our everyday language will also be different. The main character has lived in another reality for a year, a reality with its own logic. The language depends on the reality in which one lives, what another person calls horrors the boy cannot describe as such. He cannot possibly understand the word the way an ordinary person does. The logic, the reality in which he has found himself, makes it difficult for him to make himself understandable to outsiders. The words he speaks are the same as those used by the others, but their meaning is not. He has lived in another world and this world is now inevitably a part of him. The language in which he expresses himself, the words he speaks are inevitably influenced by what he has experienced. He cannot possibly understand certain words the way another person does, certain words will always have a different meaning for him. Only those who have shared his fate will truly understand his language.
The gap he experiences here between himself and everyday people must have been difficult. The idea that they will never understand it the way he does even harder. In the camp he lived with fellow sufferers, they all spoke the same language, there was a feeling of togetherness. After liberation, he returns to real life where he no longer seems to find that feeling. The first person he wants to visit is a friend from the camp. The boy no longer seems to feel at home with the people who were previously his friends or acquaintances. We also see how certain events can create a bond between people and at the same time fade the bond with others. Also think of soldiers who served together on the same front, they often remain friends for life while they can never experience that same bond with others.
We went too
The boy is annoyed that everyone keeps using the word come. The Germans have come, the stars have come, the executions have come, the boy points out that we have gone too. Everything we’ve done, every step we’ve taken could have changed history. He cannot accept that he is completely innocent in everything that has happened to him. He does not want to place himself in the role of victim, he does not want to see himself as a passive being.
We all accept a certain destiny and from the moment we accept it, we cannot settle for the fact that everything we have experienced was just a mistake, we must accept it as part of our destiny. We determine our own lives by taking certain steps, it is not the others who determine our lives.
In what the boy says here we can recognize something from Sartre, Sartre also refuses to see man as a passive being. According to his existentialism, man makes his own choices and these determine his future. We should therefore not place the blame on anything or anyone else. We should not play the victim of our own life, but rather see ourselves as the director of this life. The boy also seems to have understood this message, he cannot accept the idea that everything that happened has nothing to do with his own choices.
Moreover, the boy does not want to forget what happened. He could only do that if he died and was reborn again. He realizes that his time in the concentration camps is part of his life, of his destiny, of who he is. He understands that when he denies this or tries to forget it, he denies, forgets, a part of himself.
being a Jew
Before his time in the camp, the main character has a discussion with one of his neighbors about what it is to be a Jew. The girl is convinced that it has to do with inner characteristics. She had come to the conclusion through conversations and reading that Jews were different from ordinary people and that they were hated because of that difference. However, according to the boy, it had nothing to do with their inner self. He was convinced that it was simply the star and therefore had no more than an external cause. However, after everything he has been through, he realizes what it really means to be a Jew; it doesn’t mean anything at all. He realizes that there are no differences at all, no different blood, it’s all lies. From the moment one accepts those lies, one also accepts a certain fate. Even though that fate is originally a lie, once you accept it you can no longer label it as a mistake, once you accept it it is a part of you.
The time
The boy mentions how time in a concentration camp actually works both ways. In ordinary life, reality comes to you slowly and gradually so that you can process it all and understand everything. In the concentration camps you are flooded with images, events that make your brain and heart unable to bear it. On the one hand, you don’t get the time to let things sink in, and on the other hand, you have to try to persevere every second in such a camp, which in turn works against you.
From the moment you arrive in a concentration camp you are truly overloaded with impressions, images, words, events, you name it. The amount of information coming your way is too much to understand. However, this is good, because if you understood it all at that moment, you would not be able to cope. However, once you have settled into the camp, time starts to play a different role, everything no longer moves at that hasty pace. Time is long and you have to get through every second, try to survive. You experience a lot in such a camp, but time makes that easier. The boy also says that if everything you experienced in the camp were to happen to you again, but this time in just one minute, that would be intolerable. However, it all happens gradually and that makes it easier, time eases the pain.
When you read the book you get the impression that the worst will come after the liberation. The liberation confronts you with what happened, it is the end of suffering but the beginning of processing. The question that arises here, however, is what is the heaviest; suffering, being hungry, being beaten, seeing death before your eyes,… or realizing that you have suffered, been hungry, been beaten, seen death before your eyes and now have to process all of this and give it a place in your to live?
It seems to dawn on the boy that he is free again, but what should he do with that? He doesn’t seem to have an answer to that question yet and he soon feels homesick for the camp because there he didn’t have to burden himself with such questions. The assignment in the camp was simple, he just had to survive, the assignment he has now seems much more difficult in comparison.
Only now that he is free again can he fully reflect on what happened to him there, but when he thinks about it, everything will come back to him much faster than it did then. What he experienced in one year he can now recall in one night. Isn’t it perhaps true that that is much more painful? He himself says that time makes everything bearable, what if it all suddenly comes back to mind in a much shorter time than it took place at the time? In this respect, surviving ,after, a concentration camp seems more difficult than surviving ,in, a concentration camp.
The luck
Life in the camp had been purer and simpler, everyone talked about hardships and horrors, but the small experiences of happiness had been the most important.
The boy shows us how happiness is present even in the most unthinkable circumstances. For him it is impossible to consider the time in the camp as a horrible time. He had certainly also experienced happiness in the camp, which even made him a little homesick for his time there. In the book we see how friendship, togetherness, humanity and helpfulness are possible even in the most terrible circumstances. Everyone was hungry, tired, exhausted, but there was still enough energy to be there for each other. We also see how happiness actually lies in very small things, in the hour off, in that little bit extra during the meal, in that friend who makes sure you get up every morning. We even see how happiness can hide in misfortune, in a wound on the knee that ensures that you end up in a better place, in a bedmate who dies so that you receive double rations for a few days. You could almost say that you only see true happiness when you experience unhappiness.
In everyday life you would not recognize happiness in its simple form, you would pass it by, you would look for it but you would always overlook it. We often have the idea that happiness is something complex that we can never really achieve, but the main character shows us that that is not the case at all. Happiness truly lies in the little things.
The freedom of the unfree
The book perfectly illustrates how a person ultimately has the opportunity to be free in all circumstances. Man is in possession of an instrument that enables him to transcend all walls, all chains, all boundaries: the human mind. Our mind gives us access to the world of imagination, as long as we have the opportunity to enter this world we are free. The main character also realizes this and the freedom he discovers in this way helps him pass the time. When the boy describes this experience you realize that man is more powerful than he thinks he is. People can really try to take everything away from you, they can actually try to reduce you to an object. However, there is one thing that will always distinguish us from an object and that is our imagination, to destroy it it will take more than a concentration camp.
From “holo-hype”
Today people are still constantly confronted with the Holocaust, books, films, stories, you cannot ignore it. It seems like the whole world has something to deal with. Even the generations that have nothing to do with the event seem to be forced to undergo some kind of grieving process. Everyone today ,should, be able to form an image of the ,horrors,, whether the image is authentic or not does not matter, as long as it is gruesome.
Infinite attempts have been and are still being made to portray what it must have been like to live as a deportee. Often the writers , storytellers and filmmakers are people who have never stayed in such a camp. The question, however, is whether they are doing a good job of showing us what it must have been like. When we read the book we invariably get the impression that only someone who has been there can grasp its reality. Moreover, even they don’t seem to be able to portray to the outside world what it was like. Shouldn’t we perhaps just accept that the reality of these camps is impossible to represent? Moreover, is it not true that it is better not to imagine it at all than to gratify our minds with false images?