Primo Levi's, Survival in Auschwitz, is autobiographical account of the ten months that Levi spent in a German death camp. Survival recounts the struggle of the Jews to maintain a flicker of humanity against the Germans unending attempt to reduce the Jews to mere animals. The prisoners suffered from all types of atrocities from lack of food to being beaten for the least offense. Everything the Germans did was dedicated toward one purpose, to take away the basic foundations of what makes a person human: awareness of time, the ability to communicate, the ability to think and a persons self-awareness. The Germans are taking away the Jews future; all that matters to the prisoners is how to survive the now, their slang for never is: morgen fruh, tomorrow morning.
From the moment that prisoners entered Auschwitz the campaign began of transforming men into beasts, the Germans immediately begin to use time as a means to take away the Jews humanity. The prisoners were herded into a large room to wait with the only means to track time is dripping polluted water unsuitable to even quench their thirst. Levi remarks, "This is hell. .a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens. What can one think about? One cannot think anymore, it is like being already dead. The time passes drop by drop."(22) Without the ability to track time man begins to loose his ability to think and once that is gone man is nothing more than an animal.
The prisoners had everything taken from them after getting to the camp. They were forced to strip, given showers, had their heads shaven, and given uniforms. They even had their names taken away; every Jew was given a number and had it tattooed on their left arm. A man posses nothing, is reduced to nothing, he has had his identity taken away and is no longer a man. He loses his dignity, restraint, himself.