Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity: A Memoir (1947)

Auschwitz in Poland is a World War II Memorial evoking the horrors of the Nazi genocide of about 11 million people, of which 6 million were Jews. Two Catholics, St Maxmilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, were martyred here. Primo Levi’s memoir relives those horrors from direct experience, reflecting on the human condition, the nature of evil, and the human capacity for survival.

The Fascists captured Levi, an Italian Jew and resistance fighter, in December 1943. He, along with 600 other prisoners, arrived at Auschwitz in a crowded, freezing, and unsanitary freight car without water or food. The memoir covers 11 months at the death camp, ending with the imminent arrival of the Red Army when the Germans fled. When they first arrived at the indescribably wretched conditions in Auschwitz, Levi reflects that they had “reached the bottom”.

Tattooed with numbers, the healthy prisoners were sent to work, the weak exterminated in the crematoriums. Levi had to endure backbreaking work in a synthetic rubber factory, and dehumanizing treatment. Due to his small stature, Levi found the manual labour unbearable. When he lamented the dehumanizing conditions, a fellow prisoner advised him that one must force oneself to save at least the outward form of civilization to survive and bear witness.

In the crammed bunkers, overwhelmed by pain, exhaustion, disease and hunger, the inmates begged, stole and tried whatever means merely to stay alive. Death was a daily occurrence. Levi, wounded when a clumsy labourer dropped a metal tool on his foot, spent three weeks in the infirmary, relieved of the hard labour.

To him, the camp was a gigantic social experiment in “the conduct of the human animal in the struggle for life,” where people pushed to the extreme divide into two categories emerge: “The Drowned and the Saved,” i.e. those who give up and those who curry favour with the oppressors and tyrannize their fellows to gain position and privilege. He describes a surreal experience in the camp's magnesium chloride warehouse where the filthy, weak and emaciated Levi, a chemist by training, hopeful of a better job as a “specialist”, was interviewed in German and treated like an animal.

            Levi also experienced a world of goodness and beauty outside the walls of the labour camp when Lorenzo, a selfless Italian, gifted him with smuggled food and extra clothing for winter.  In October 1944, anticipating new arrivals, the Nazis made selections to exterminate more prisoners to accommodate new arrivals. As the Allied attacks came closer, the Germans prepared to flee.

In the penultimate chapter, Levi describes the last days at the camp. An attack of scarlet fever landed him in the camp infirmary. As the Red Army arrived on 27th January, Levi and friends were burying one of their dead fellows in the snow. The book concludes with the author’s reflections shared with his fellow writer Philip Roth.

Nightingale of the Holy Eucharist (2022)

Fr Joseph Kumbuckal & Jith George

This is the inspiring story of a young girl whose heroic sufferings and her love of the Holy Eucharist made her celebrated as “Indian Carlo Acutis”. Ajna George died at the age of 27 in 2022. Within weeks, her life story became viral on account of her remarkable talents as a leader, singer and influencer of youth and above all her love of the Holy Eucharist in the midst of intense suffering.  Before her passing, Ajna battled bone cancer (osteosarcoma) for five years. But she bore it all with a joyful acceptance as part of her sufferings, allying her to the crucified Lord.

In this book, Jith George, her friend and fellow of the Jesus Youth volunteer, and Fr Joseph Kumbuckal, her spiritual guide and teacher at college, collaborate to recount their memories of Ajna, gathering similar remembrances from her family, friends, teachers and students in school and college. In the face of extreme adversity, Ajna demonstrated a profound, childlike love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, inspiring many around her to follow her model.

Ajna was born to Muttungal George and Achamma, members of St. Patrick’s Parish, Archdiocese of Verapoly on April 24, 1994, as their second daughter. From childhood she was drawn to Jesus and would spend hours in prayer at home. In school too she stood out in many ways as a joyful fun-loving, intelligent, empathetic girl who would run to the chapel whenever she could.

After her first communion, she used to spend hours in Eucharistic adoration never missing daily Communion, viewing it as her sustenance. After school when she joined Sacred Heart College Cochin, she animated the Jesus Youth Movement on the campus and became its coordinator. As member of the Ernakulum Teens’ Team and the All Kerala Central Music Team, her musical talents became famous.

On the campus she took the lead to reach out to the poor and the destitute, prompting her fellow students to engage in charity under the auspices of the movement named Thanalmaram (shade tree) on the campus. Top in academics, Ajna passed her qualifying examination for professorship even before her studies were over.   

            The day she got appointed as lecturer in her alma mater, she was diagnosed with cancer setting her life on a new path altogether. How she responded to it is described in the words of those around her and the picture that emerges is that of a “suffering servant of the Lord” whose faith, courage and closeness to the Eucharist became legendary.

During debilitating surgeries that followed, she held out, comforting her dear ones, ignoring her own sufferings.  Mysterious/miraculous experiences accompanied her passing. Fr. Kumbukal notes that in dark times like ours, Ajna is a role model for all. Jith George recounts his mysterious experience reminiscent of Ajna’s partial blindness and healing prompting him to write this book.